A beautifully written and far-reaching exploration of Japanese culture from first-time novelist Susan Barker.
Rebecca Pearson Independent on Sunday, Books of the Year
 

Mary, a blond graduate from England, has drifted into a job in a hostess lounge in Osaka. She and other ‘economy geishas’ are employed by the enigmatic Mama san to spend their evenings flirting with rich Japanese salarymen, playing drinking games and taking turns in the karaoke booth. Mary is in love with Yuji, Mama san’s handsome son. But Yuji’s loyalty is to the petty Yakuza gangster for whom he works.

Watanabe, the introverted cook, watches Mary from The Sayonara Bar’s kitchen. He exists in his own manga-fuelled fantasy of the fourth dimension, and believes he can see into other people’s souls, as well as into the gurgling viscera of their bodies. When he perceives the danger of Mary’s growing obsession with Yuji, he resolves to protect her whatever the cost.

Mr Sato works for the Daiwa Trading Corporation. Obsessive overwork cannot cover the emptiness of his solitary life. Lured against his will to The Sayonara Bar by his boss, he finds himself returning there to escape his dead wife’s ghost.

Edgy, sly, and often very funny, SAYONARA BAR spins a kaleidoscopic, genre-crossing tale of people cut adrift in a shrinking, globalized world.

'Sayonara Bar is a showpiece of breathtaking new talent.'
Scottish Daily Record

Highly original ... A major achievement by an exciting new author.
Independent on Sunday

'With dry humour and crisp observation, Barker conveys the inner chaos masked by the external regimens of a society where intimacy is contrived, and loyalty is strained. Japan has not, for a long time, been made to seem so accessible, or so remote.'
Literary Review

'Neat suspense ... These three narratives blend into an unusual but satisfying whole.'
Guardian

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