Michael Barnes
I selected this novel as my choice for bookclub this month, so from that detail you can surmise I found the text so engaging I recommended it for others to read. I read it fist in the early 2000s and I think it holds up well. The tale whilst initially focusing Jane Takagi-Little, an unemployed Japanese-American documentary filmmaker and Akiko Ueno, the bulimic Japanese wife of the executive who hatched the My American Wife! concept, lives an ocean away. She is thin, so thin that her bones hurt, so thin that her periods have stopped, soon collects other interesting characters with her production crew and the families that each week made up the 30minute episodes of My American Wife.
As Jane uncovers more the terrible industry and dangerous practices in the American beef industry, particular focus on the terrible effect Diethylstilbestrol (DES) an added hormone supposedly no longer and its possible personal cost for Jane. Akiko whose horrendous treatment by her husband 'John' saw a couple of friends I had recommended the book to, call while they were reading it to ask "is Akiko going to be okay" and her journey is one of the most satisfying to read, though both she and Jane have grown though the narrative. John Ueno doesn't, he remains an asshole.
The detail of events that happen around these two that add to the story such as the 1992 Murder of Yoshihiro Hattori a Japanese student on an exchange program to the United States who was shot to death by Rodney Peairs on Halloween, and the information about the cattle industry reminiscent of Upton Sinclair's 'The Jungle' show the detail and research that Ruth Ozeki has pulled in to craft the world around these characters
I selected this novel as my choice for bookclub this month, so from that detail you can surmise I found the text so engaging I recommended it for others to read. I read it fist in the early 2000s and I think it holds up well. The tale whilst initially focusing Jane Takagi-Little, an unemployed Japanese-American documentary filmmaker and Akiko Ueno, the bulimic Japanese wife of the executive who hatched the My American Wife! concept, lives an ocean away. She is thin, so thin that her bones hurt, so thin that her periods have stopped, soon collects other interesting characters with her production crew and the families that each week made up the 30minute episodes of My American Wife.
As Jane uncovers more the terrible industry and dangerous practices in the American beef industry, particular focus on the terrible effect Diethylstilbestrol (DES) an added hormone supposedly no longer and its possible personal cost for Jane. Akiko whose horrendous treatment by her husband 'John' saw a couple of friends I had recommended the book to, call while they were reading it to ask "is Akiko going to be okay" and her journey is one of the most satisfying to read, though both she and Jane have grown though the narrative. John Ueno doesn't, he remains an asshole.
The detail of events that happen around these two that add to the story such as the 1992 Murder of Yoshihiro Hattori a Japanese student on an exchange program to the United States who was shot to death by Rodney Peairs on Halloween, and the information about the cattle industry reminiscent of Upton Sinclair's 'The Jungle' show the detail and research that Ruth Ozeki has pulled in to craft the world around these characters