Michelle Bailat-Jones, author of Fog Island Mountains, on tour November/December 2014
About Fog Island Mountains
- Paperback: 176 pages
- Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc. (November 4, 2014)
Huddled beneath the volcanoes of the Kirishima mountain range in southern Japan, also called the Fog Island Mountains, the inhabitants of small town Komachi are waiting for the biggest of the summer’s typhoons. South African expatriate Alec Chester has lived in Komachi for nearly forty years. Alec considers himself an ordinary man, with common troubles and mundane achievements until his doctor gives him a terminal cancer diagnosis and his wife, Kanae, disappears into the gathering storm. Kanae flees from the terrifying reality of Alec’s diagnosis, even going so far as to tell a childhood friend that she is already a widow. Her willful avoidance of the truth leads her to commit a grave infidelity, and only when Alec is suspected of checking himself out of the hospital to commit a quiet suicide does Kanae come home to face what it will mean to lose her husband.
Narrating this story is Azami, one of Komachi’s oldest and most peculiar inhabitants, the daughter of a famous storyteller with a mysterious story of her own. A haunting and beautiful reinterpretation of the Japanese kitsune folktale tradition, Fog Island Mountains is a novel about the dangers of action taken in grief and of a belief in healing through storytelling.
“Transporting and lyrical, Fog Island Mountains takes a poignant look into a couple’s struggle with terminal illness, and uncovers the sustaining presence of memory, myth, and history in a small Japanese community. Narrated by the all-knowing local storyteller, who provides a perceptive communal voice, Bailat-Jones’s novel is part poem, part suspense story, propelled by the violence of a summer typhoon, the complications of the characters’ grief, and spare, elegiac prose that weaves its own urgent spell.” —Karen Brown, author of The Longings of Wayward Girls
My review:
Five Stars
Copy received from TLC Book Tours for an honest review
I couldn't have anticipated that a book of 176 pages would have such a profound impact on me! I was absolutely mesmerized with this story, the writing and the setting. I have never read a book/story like this one. Michelle Bailat- Jones ripped my heart out and I could not wait to see what would happen next, how the story would unfold and how these character's life's would end!
Alec and Kanae were such complex character. There were so many layers to them as individual's and as a couple. They shocked me, surprised me, disappointed me! There were times I wanted to scream at them with frustration but they never once bored me. This was an incredible story! I loved learning about the Japanese culture and traditions. I highly recommend this story and really enjoyed it as well.
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