I am thrilled to announce that I’m giving away 2 copies of this book to 2 lucky winners! Trust me, you want to enter this giveaway because this book is FABULOUS.
Photo courtesy of Harper Perennial
If You Follow Me by Malena Watrous was definitely one of my favorite books to review this year. As proof, I offer up that I gave it a rare five-star rating on Goodreads. I grade hard, as I compare each book I read to my favorite novel, Pride and Prejudice. Malena Watrous has a natural affinity for storytelling; she has a sly sense of humor; and avoids the pitfalls of writing about a character who faces death, relationship and work troubles, all the while being the big blonde fish-out-of-water in a small town in Japan.
Superbly crafted, If You Follow Me is an achingly beautiful study in grief and the harrowing process of finding one’s true self in the midst of overwhelming rules and cultural traditions in Japan. Ms. Watrous shifts gears easily between the comic and the melancholy, as her main character Marina is often making a rude to her neighbors by ignoring the overwhelming gomi (garbage) laws. Her near-daily offenses are reported to her supervisor Miyoshi-sensei. This often leads Marina to get lectures via letter from him, as he tells her to first learn gomi law, second Japanese language, and third you can enjoy international friendship. This is like holding hands across the sea!
Marina commits offenses in her house as well, as she near-daily offends her girlfriend and roommate Carolyn, who Marina has forced to stay in the closet as her girlfriend while they live together and teach near one another in a small coastal town called Shika. Carolyn was the one who wanted to teach in Japan, but Marina got a job offer first, and has gotten the better teaching assignment and the fun, young supervisor. Carolyn encouraged Marina to make her own friends, and Marina has started making friends before Carolyn does. Carolyn even tried to insist that they have separate apartments, and finds out Marina lied to her about their availability, while they suffer together in their bug-infested and non-insilated home with one heck of a stinky refrigerator due to the abandoned side of rotten beef the previous tenants left behind for them to clean up.
Marina has come to Shika to escape her toxic grief from her father’s recent suicide. As she learns in Shika, you can never escape your garbage, even the emotional kind, especially when you live near a nucular power plant and garbage constant;y washes up on shore from across the sea. She is forced to deal with her loss, her tense relationship, and along the way, Marina finds a deep understanding of her true self, all the while trying to survive the cultural differences of the people of Japan. She may not be your typical small, dark, and mannered model citizen, but she certainly can karaoke with the best of them!
To order your copy of If You Follow Me, click here.
Photo courtesy of Harper Perennial
To visit Malena’s blog, go here.
To find Malena on Facebook, click here.
To follow Malena on Twitter, go here.
IF YOU FOLLOW ME CONTEST
RULES:
**Open to U.S. and Canadian residents only
**NO P.O. BOXES, PLEASE
**MUST INCLUDE EMAIL ADDRESS IN COMMENT
**ALL COMMENTS MUST BE SEPARATE TO COUNT
HOW TO ENTER:
+1 ENTRY: Go to Malena Watrous’s blog HERE and tell me via your comment below what fun or interesting thing you learned or noticed on her website.
+1 MORE ENTRY: Watch the video above, and tell me what you liked about it.
+1 MORE ENTRY: Comment if you are a loyal follower of hers, either on Facebook or Twitter or Goodreads. Tell me where and how you follow her.
+1 MORE ENTRY: Comment here and tell me why you need to win this book! Are or were you ever a teacher, a former resident of Japan, or share something else in common with Malena or the main character Marina in If You Follow Me. Please feel free to tell us about it.
+5 MORE ENTRIES: Blog about this giveaway, share a link via Twitter, or post a link via Facebook or any other social networking site about my If You Follow Me giveaway and come back here and leave a comment with that link.
Contest ends next Sunday, May 30th at midnight. Good luck to you all.
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Another reason to enter this giveaway – the author send me a message on Facebook that just cracked me up:
“In your facebook retrospective photos, you have the BEST 80′s pictures/hair that I have ever seen. You could be one of the original core cast of the John Hughes movies. Love it.”
How could you not want to read her book after reading that?
I thought her post about the Accidental Blog Tourist was very interesting!
I would love to win this one,
Nataliew2@gmail.com
Following Malena on Twitter
@nataliew2
nataliew2@gmail.com
Hope karma will be on my side and putting my name in for If you Follow Me. What I’ve learnt on this website is that Mike is the reason for her now hair. The pictures from her youth are reminiscent of Laura Ingalls to her now Farah Fawcett locks, courtesy of Mike no doubt.
To be brutally honest I enjoyed the review and loved the cover. Maybe the tale will trigger some affinity of my own travelling / working days in India in 1992-1996 as a young woman desperately searching for her roots in Dharamsala. Being raised abroad but coming back to India to discover that no matter where I go… I remain a tied to searching for the friendship of the soulful kind.
So putting my name in in the hopes that karma will lead me to reading Malena’s world in Japan.
Tashi Delegs
PK Reeves
Aisle B
PK – I love the Laura Ingalls comparison. I somehow missed that, so thanks for the heads up.
FYI: Mike is Mi Kee spelt funky in Tibetan style ;P
Now I also use an alias, especially if posting a comment in how I really feel. Thanks for getting back to my “please release me….let me go” fb message. The dates are 9-8-09 (there are two…one at 9:16 and the other 9:29) to I’m so damn sick of week 8…key word Kardashiyucks. Hysterectomy Update …comment dated 6/26/09 att 10:33 pm (I would be Sam)
Okay, let’s see…I’ve commented so that’s one entry…I’m a teacher who has taught for sixteen years and is trying to get back into it after a four year “sabbatical” while I tried to help our son with his PTSD and Reactive Attachment Disorder due to abuse in the orphanage in Ukraine before we adopted him (he’s currently in a psych hosp. for assaulting me because I “look” like one of the workers) surely that’s worth an entry. My daughter has Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis so it’s like we’re related, even though she’s adopted, so you and I would be like relatives by association so that’s got to be an entry. I had a hysterectomy at 23, one there too? I will link on my blog. I’m unemployed since my husband’s company has no work and so he laid me off (I’d try to sue him for sexual harrasment but there hasn’t been any for a long time) that has GOT to be an entry….to be laid off by your own husband. Okay, just gimme the book…..k? And thanks for letting me go…sucks that my opinion has to be camouflaged.
Beemommy – I’ve switched all the incriminating evidence to your new “name” here on the blog. Trust me, you are the third person to ask me to do that this year. I had to laugh that you got laid off by your husband, and that you couldn’t even sue for Sexual Harassment, lol! (Not that unemployment is funny, I’m coming up on my 8th month anniversary and I’m just DYING!)
I am very sorry to hear about your child. That breaks my heart.
I love your blog (especially the book reviews!) and just checked out Malena’s blog as well. I really liked her tips for writing, especially the accordion approach to revision.
Lauren – Glad to hear you love it, very cool of you to tell me.
Read 4 times more than you write!
Mary, trust me, I read way more books that I review here. I wish I had all the time in the world to read more, but I don’t. Sigh! Perhaps I’ll get through a few books this week while traveling to NYC.
Posted a link on my blog. I love you Ghetto Girl (and I’d REALLY like a copy of this book) http://thephuckits.blogspot.com/2010/05/book-giveaway.html
I am a GFC follower of Malena Watrous.
CarolNWong@aol.com
I would like to win this book because of two things.
I am interested how tha author treated the father’s suicide and Marina’s reaction. My brother committed suicide and has been the most difficult part of my life.
Also, I have been to China but only one day to Japan. The living conditions are not always great there are great cultural differences but I cried when I left China. I loved the people who I made friends with.
An interesting thing that I learned on Malena Watrous’s blog is that she has no control of how her books are translated into other languages because she doesn’t know those languages. I had never thought of that before.
teddyr66 at yahoo dot com
In the Video, I really liked how Malena Watrous talked about her own experience living in Japan.
teddyr66 at yahoo dot com
I need to read this book because I am really interested in people teaching in Japan. I saw a really good documentary about it. I think that this fictional account sounds really engaging. I am intrigued.
teddyr66 at yahoo dot com
Translating any book would be an incredible undertaking!
I would enjoy this book.
I like the fun picture of Japanese lanterns at the top of the author’s blog.
Please enter me in this giveaway!
familyhistree at yahoo dot com
Sarah E
In the video, I liked the author’s description of the book’s storyline based on a woman trying to find herself, heal, and figure out her life while living abroad. I also liked that the author included a same-sex relationship in the book.
I follow the author on Twitter (@saemmerson).
familyhistree at yahoo dot com
Sarah E
I would love to win this book because the storyline sounds fascinating. I also am interested in learning about the experiences of Americans who teach abroad.
familyhistree at yahoo dot com
Sarah E
+5 I tweeted: http://twitter.com/saemmerson/status/15064683201
familyhistree at yahoo dot com
Sarah E
Winners – I’ve emailed you twice in the past few days! Please get back to me by midnight, otherwise I might have to move on to two other winners.
Ok, I never heard back from my first winners, even though I emailed them both twice, and begged via this blog and Facebook, and even went so far as to leave you both a message on your blogs!
I’ve been forced to email two NEW WINNERS – check your emails, because you HAVE TO get back with me within 24 hours!