An unforgettably anarchic and off-the-wall portrait of loneliness and redemption as seen through the neon glare of Tokyo.
"Sometimes, when I'm staring down a room of Japanese stewardesses-in-training, looking across a sea of shiny black coifs, a chorus like of stockinged legs, knees together, toes to the side, when I'm chanting, "Sir, you are endangering yourself and other passengers!" I think i should have let my brother stab me. I shouldn't have run when Frank came at me with the carving knife, yelling "Satan! Satan!" I should have faced him, arms outstretched, eyes closed in sacrifice and let him put the blade into me."
Margaret is doing everything in her power to forget home, and Tokyo's exotic nightlife -- teeming with drink, drugs, and three-hour love hotels -- enables her to keep her demons at bay. Working as an English specialist at Air-Pro Stewardess Training Institute by day and losing herself in a sex- and drug-addled oblivion by night, Margaret represses memories of her painful childhood and her older brother Frank's descent into madness.
The close relationship between Margaret and Frank is revealed through a series of flashbacks -- a closeness that was forged against the breakdown of their parents' marriage, their father's absence, and their mother's change in sexual preference. Her brother's gradual descent into mental illness and final diagnosis precipitates Margaret's escape to Tokyo -- in the world's largest metropolis she is a nameless face, far removed from the realities of her past.
But Margaret's deliberate nihilism is thrown off balance as she becomes increasingly haunted by images of a Western girl missing in Tokyo. And when she meets Kazu, a mysterious gangster, their affair sparks a chain of events that could spell tragedy for Margaret, in a vast, teeming city where it's all too easy to disappear without a trace.
Sexy, fast, ringing with authenticity, and with a talented and original new narrative voice, 'Lost Girls and Love Hotels' is a debut to rattle your brain and pull hard on your heart.
