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Summary
Summary
"Each chapter of this enrapturing novel is elegantly brief and charged with barely contained emotion." -- New York Times Book Review
A gripping debut set in modern-day Tokyo and inspired by a true crime, for readers of Everything I Never Told You and The Perfect Nanny , What's Left of Me Is Yours charts a young woman's search for the truth about her mother's life--and her murder.
In Japan, a covert industry has grown up around the "wakaresaseya" (literally "breaker-upper"), a person hired by one spouse to seduce the other in order to gain the advantage in divorce proceedings. When Satō hires Kaitarō, a wakaresaseya agent, to have an affair with his wife, Rina, he assumes it will be an easy case. But Satō has never truly understood Rina or her desires and Kaitarō's job is to do exactly that--until he does it too well. While Rina remains ignorant of the circumstances that brought them together, she and Kaitarō fall in a desperate, singular love, setting in motion a series of violent acts that will forever haunt her daughter's life.
Told from alternating points of view and across the breathtaking landscapes of Japan, Stephanie Scott exquisitely renders the affair and its intricate repercussions. As Rina's daughter, Sumiko, fills in the gaps of her mother's story and her own memory, Scott probes the thorny psychological and moral grounds of the actions we take in the name of love, asking where we draw the line between passion and possession.
Author Notes
Stephanie Scott is a Singaporean and British writer who was born and raised in South East Asia. She read English Literature at York and Cambridge and holds an M.St in Creative Writing from Oxford. Scott was awarded a BAJS Toshiba Studentship for her anthropological work on her novel What's Left of Me Is Yours and has been made a member of the British Japanese Law Association as a result of her research. What's Left of Me Is Yours was named a Brooklyn Book Festival Debut of the Year and a Guardian / Observer Best Debut of 2020. She is based in Singapore and London.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In Scott's intense debut, a young woman explores the Japanese legal system and its relationship to the country's divorce industry. Twenty-seven-year-old Sumiko Sarashima, a newly licensed attorney, seeks to discover the truth behind her mother's murder in 1994 when Sumiko was seven. Rina Sato's murderer, Kaitaro Nakamura, who once worked to seduce his clients' spouses as evidential grounds for divorce, is now serving a 20-year sentence. What's not clear to Sumiko is why Kaitaro murdered her mother. Scott rolls out the rest of the story adroitly, scrupulously reconstructing Sumiko's parents' past through case files and videotapes. Rina's and Kaitaro's passionate relationship unfolds in juxtaposed stories covering numerous locations--Tokyo, Sapporo, Shimoda, courtrooms and prison. The novel becomes exhilarating as Sumiko narrows her pursuit for the truth, interspersed with wistful chapters recounting Sumiko's poignant memories of having two parents before she was adopted by her maternal grandfather. As Sumiko works to resolve the mystery of her mother's murder, sifting through the facts brings her closer to understanding the blurred line that exists between love and hate. Byzantine subplots, distinctive characters, and atmospheric settings will leave readers spellbound. (Apr.)
Guardian Review
Can you truly love someone and kill them? This was the question that spurred the Singaporean-British author Stephanie Scott to write her debut novel. She was inspired by a real case in Japan, where a man employed to break up a marriage - a wakaresaseya - was convicted of murdering the woman he had been paid to seduce. He insisted he loved her. It's a truism - as well as a truth - that fiction helps us feel empathy, as an imaginative act of understanding. And Scott's book, which opens as a crime drama before elegantly turning into a love story, is generous in its attempts to excavate the humanity in a pretty grim premise. The storytelling shifts smoothly back and forth, from the blossoming, genuinely loving relationship in the mid-1990s between the unhappy Rina and Kaitaro - the man employed to seduce Rina by her husband so he can more easily get a divorce - and the investigation 20 years later by Rina's daughter, Sumiko, discovering the truth about her mother's murder. Sumiko, a trainee lawyer, remains remarkably calm and rational when exploring the legal documents and tapes that reveal her mother was strangled by her lover - remarkably lacking in rage, in fact. There is a niggling sense that Scott is so busy making sure the he-loved-her-yet-he-killed-her premise is convincing that she overlooks how unforgivable such violence is. That's not to say there aren't some very grim moments, but I found myself pulling away from the amount we're expected to invest in Kaitaro and his love. There's no real psychological exploration of where the final act of violence came from; rather, he's portrayed as a good guy who messed up. Scott spent many years researching the novel in Japan and it shows: she weaves in explanations of the legal system in a way that's genuinely fascinating, although an earlier, more in-depth clarification of Japanese custody battles might have helped establish why the stakes are so high for all the characters. And the world she creates in What's Left of Me Is Yours feels very sure under foot: deeply researched, but delicately described. Scott gives a clear sense of place and time, from contemporary Tokyo to evocations of seaside holiday cabins and shrines in forests. I'm sure many readers will find the elegiac tone touching; I found it slipped into sentimentality. The narrative voice feels somewhat staid and old-fashioned, especially for a young writer's debut. Scott is more assured when it comes to structure: she braids her different characters' timelines together with sophistication, her storytelling harmoniously well-constructed. The big questions over whether it's better to lie or to tell a difficult truth, and what might constitute a betrayal, are layered across generations and decades and there is strength in the subtlety with which Scott slowly unpacks them.
Kirkus Review
In Japan, a daughter explores the crime of passion that took her mother's life.Sumiko was just 7 when her mother died and her father moved away; she was raised by her grandfather, who has always maintained that her mother was killed in a car accident. Twenty years later, she answers a phone call meant for him from a prison administrator with information about inmate Kaitar Nakamura; when the caller realizes whom she is speaking with, she hangs up. With just this detail, Sumiko begins an obsessive quest. She turns up an article headlined "WAKARESASEYA AGENT GOES TOO FAR?" from which she learns that Kaitar Nakamura was an agent in the "marriage breakup" industry. He was hired by her father to seduce her mother in order to provide grounds for divorce. Nakamura claims that he and her mother had fallen in love and were about to start a new life together. When Sumiko visits Nakamura's defense attorney, the woman hands over all her files and videotaped interviews with her client. Weaving through the story of Sumiko's search and her recollections of her childhood is the story of her mother and her lover, from the moment he pretended to meet her accidentally at the market and moving inexorably to the murder scene. Scott is a Singaporean British writer born and raised in Southeast Asia; her debut is inspired by a 2010 case in Tokyo and based on years of research. The book proceeds slowly, lingering on enjoyable details of Japanese landscape and food but perhaps not adding enough new information to maintain the level of interest set by the sensational details in the first pages.An unusual and stylish story of love and murderless a mystery than a study of emotions and cultural mores. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
A young photographer falls in love with a detective in Tokyo in the early 1990s in Scott's moody, leisurely paced debut. Rina, unhappily married to Sato and the mother of young daughter Sumiko, falls for Kaitaro. She doesn't know that Kaitoro works in the "marriage breakup" trade, and was hired by Sato to seduce her, so that Sato can divorce her for adultery. But then Kaitoro falls for Rina as well. And then, just as they are about to move in together, he murders her. Decades later, Sumiko, who has just passed the exam to become a lawyer, goes back to investigate this mystery, and uncovers layer after layer of complexity. Alternating primarily between Rina and Sumiko's points of view, Scott poignantly evokes both a mother trapped by the choices made for her and a daughter learning to deal with her own precarious freedom. She clearly defines the unfortunate effects of the traditional Japanese legal system on women, and with carefully accumulated details describes a Japan both physically and psychologically teetering on the edge of change.
Excerpts
Excerpts
What's in a Name? For the Sarashima, the naming of a child is a family matter. For me, it marked a bond with tradition that would govern my life. The names of my maternal relatives have always been chosen at Kiyoji in Meguro. You can just about glimpse the temple from the park at the end of our street. It sits at the base of a hill in the very center of our neighborhood; the green peaks of its roof tiles gleam in the sun and the red pillars of the portico peer out over the surrounding buildings. As I grew up, my grandfather told me that our family had worshipped there since coming to Tokyo. He said that they remained at prayer during the firebombing of the city and that after the war they had restored the temple. For him, it is a symbol of regeneration. This is why, as soon as Mama recovered from my birth, instead of gathering around the kamidana in the northern corner of the living room, my family went to Kiyoji and my mother carried me in her arms beneath the gates and into the heart of the temple complex. As we climbed the stone steps leading to the main hall, my mother glanced up at the sprawling wooden roof, at its curved eaves stretching out beyond the building--shutting out the sunlight--resulting in the cool, dark shadows within. Inside, we proceeded through the sweet smoke of incense to the altar. All around us the wind blew through in gusts and the air swirled, while outside the bronze bells of the surrounding temples began to toll. I don't remember this journey, but I can see it quite clearly: me in my cream blanket, my father carrying Tora, the toy white tiger Grandpa had given to me, and my grandfather himself, grave in his three-piece suit. I have been told this story so many times it has seeped into my memory. One of the monks, pale in his indigo robes, bowed to my grandfather and took from him a pouch containing a selection of names. My mother had prepared these names, first consulting the astrologer and then choosing her favorites counting out the strokes of the characters to ensure that each given name, when combined with our surname, would add up to an optimal number. I can still see her sitting at our dining table in her house slippers and jeans, an oversized T-shirt covering the bump that was me. The blinds are open, the sun slants across the marble floors of our home, while in the kitchen the rice cooker bubbles and the washing up dries on the draining board. My mother lays a sheet of rice paper out in front of her and turns to the inkstone by her side. I can see her dip her brush into the ink, smell the rich scent of earth and pine soot rising into the air, as using the very tip of the bristles she presses down, the horsehair bending to create the first fluid stroke. The monk bowed once more and placed the names in a shallow dish upon the altar. Then, kneeling before them, he selected a delicate wooden fan and, in unison with the breeze that drifted through the open screens, unfurled it, whipping up currents of air. Everyone was silent. The gray smoke of the incense drifted towards the rafters as one by one the names painted by my mother flew towards the ceiling. Eventually, one remained, alone on the teak surface: 寿美子 Grandpa knelt and picked it up from the altar and a smile broke out on his face as he read the characters of my given name and their meanings: celebration, beauty, child. "Sumiko," he said. "Sumiko Sarashima." My father had been silent throughout the proceedings. In the weeks leading up to my birth, plans for an "adoptive" ceremony had been discussed. Under Japanese law, both people in a marriage must share the same surname, but in certain circumstances, a husband may take his wife's surname and join her household, so that her name and her line may continue. My father was a second son and his family, the Satōs, readily agreed. However, that day, as the monk took out a fresh sheet of paper and began to inscribe my full name upon it, my father spoke: "Satō," he said. "She is a Satō, not a Sarashima." What I Know *I was raised by my grandfather, Yoshi Sarashima. *I lived with him in a white house in Meguro, Tokyo. *In the evenings he would read to me. *He told me every story but my own. My grandfather was a lawyer; he was careful in his speech. Even when we were alone together in his study and I would perched on his lap tracing the creases in his leather armchair, or later, when I sat on a stool by his side, even then, he had a precision with words. I have kept faith with that precision to this day. Grandpa read everything to me--Mishima, Sartre, Dumas, Tolstoy, Bashō, tales of his youth and duck hunting in Shimoda, and one book, The Trial, that became my favorite. The story begins like this: "Someone must have been telling lies about Josef K." When we read that line for the first time, Grandpa explained that the story was a translation. I was twelve years old, stretching out my fingers for a world beyond my own, and I reached out then to the yellowed page, stroking the written characters that spoke of something new. I read the opening aloud, summoning the figure of Josef K.: a lonely man, a man people would tell lies about. As I grew older, I began to argue with Grandpa about The Trial. He told me other people fought over it too, that they fight about it even today--over the translation of one word in particular-- verleumdet. To tell a lie. In some versions of the story, this word is translated as "slander." Slander speaks of courts and accusations, of public reckoning; it has none of the childhood resonance of "telling lies." And yet, when I read this story for the first time, it was the translator's use of "telling lies" that fascinated me. Lies, when they are first told, have a shadow quality to them, a gossamer texture that can wrap around a life. They have that feather-light essence of childhood, and my childhood was built on lies. The summer before my mother died, we went to the sea. When I look back on that time, those months hold a sense of finality for me, not because that was the last holiday my mother and I would take together, but because it is the site of my last true memory. Every year, as the August heat engulfed Tokyo, my family piled their suitcases onto a local train and headed for the coast. We went to Shimoda. Father remained in the city to work, but Grandpa Sarashima always came with us. Each time, he stopped at the same kiosk in the station to buy frozen clementines for the train, and in the metallic heat of the carriage Mama and I would wait impatiently for the fruit to soften so we could get at the pockets of sorbet within. Finally, when our chins were sticky with juice, Mama would turn to me in our little row of two and ask what I would like to do by the sea, just she and I, alone. Our house on the peninsula was old, its wooden gateposts warped by the winds that peeled off the Pacific. As we climbed towards the rocky promontory at the top of the hill, the gates, dark and encrusted with salt, signaled that my home was near: Washikura--Eagle's Nest, the house overlooking the bay, between Mount Fuji and the sea. Our country is built around mountains, people are piled up in concrete boxes, cages. To have land is rare, but the house in Shimoda had belonged to my family since before the war, and afterward my grandfather fought to keep it when everything else was lost. Forest sweeps over the hills above the house. I was not allowed up there alone as a child, so when I looked at my mother on the train that summer she knew immediately what I would ask to do. In the afternoons, Mama and I climbed high on the wooded slopes above Washikura. We watched the tea fields as they darkened before autumn. We lay back on the rocky black soil and breathed in the sharp resin of the pines. Some days, we heard the call of a sea eagle as it circled overhead. Excerpted from What's Left of Me Is Yours: A Novel by Stephanie Scott All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.