In the Empire of Dreams [Hardcover]

Dianne Highbridge (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1999

Three women expatriates in Tokyo, looking for happiness, love, fulfillment, and a new identity as their lives intertwine with those of other foreigners and the Japanese among whom--and sometimes with whom--they live.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In the Empire of Dreams captures expatriate life in a way few novels can--its frustrations, its pleasures, the bittersweet pang of being "irrevocably other." For some of Dianne Highbridge's expats, life in Japan feels like coming home; without knowing it, they've been foreigners all their lives. They're "the real gaijin," as one character puts it,

The ones who can't go home, not just yet. The ones still here, still fumbling for the right words in a language made for not explaining, still searching for lovers whose embraces bring to mind no pain, still hopefully clapping hands before the shrines of gods who will never know them but whose indifference itself seems sweet. The uncertain, the messy, the screwed-up, her own kind.

In 10 self-contained chapters, Highbridge paints a series of messy, screwed-up lives. Elaine, the scholar; Cathy, the potter; Gwyneth, the prim Englishwoman whose flight from her homeland fills her with glee: "She escaped! She escaped from everything! From grubby men on bus queues, from headscarves, and gravy, and Tories!" The structure is fragmented, but like so much about this novel, it works: in these vignettes Elaine and Cathy and all of their friends brush by one another much like expatriate acquaintances nodding in the street. Their Japan is one of cherry blossoms and tea ceremonies, to be sure, but it's also one of love hotels, department-store "disaster corners," and monotonous second-rate teaching jobs. Rather than pretending to tell us something new about Japan, Highbridge has told us something new about those who seek it out; the result is a delicate, unsentimental, and surprisingly cohesive book. --Chloe Byrne

From Publishers Weekly

Candid disillusionment and a fragile, exquisite hopefulness characterize Highbridge's sensitive assortment of expatriates living, teaching and growing older in Japan. Most of these 10 interconnected stories deftly reveal the lives of gaijin: American, British and Australian foreigners, self-consciously exploring Japanese culture, people and customs. Among the adventurous misfits are Janet, an uncertain "big" American who came to Japan after her divorce and now figures she could partner off with a sumo wrestler. British expat Gwyneth finds comfort in the way the Japanese politely perceive her: "Thin, gangly Gwyneth, her mother's streak of misery, is now 'our elegant teacher.'" Australian author Highbridge (A Much Younger Man) suggests that for many of her characters the search for identity is grounded in a desire to escape their previous incarnations. One fascinating element her characters share is how tenaciously their signature melancholia clings to them in spite of their escapist immersions and occasional epiphanies. Highbridge's version of Japan is skillfully and complexly filtered through her Western characters' eyes via rebellious trysts at "love hotels," cramped and transitory Tokyo apartments, earthquakes and cherry blossoms, public urban suicides, post-AIDS bathhouses. In several stories, she also gives voice to Japanese women navigating the rough waters of marriage and careers. "Teaching the Nightingale" finds Teruko, a no longer young Japanese professor, rethinking her position as the mistress of her married lover and attempting to propose marriage to her homosexual gaijin friend. In Highbridge's assured hands, each tale is a separate and complete revelation of the narrator; meanwhile, the stories cumulatively construct a graceful and coherent picture of alienation and connection, of longing and belonging, and Japan is rendered gorgeously as the site of simultaneous escape and self-exploration.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Soho Press; First Printing edition (April 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1569471460
• ISBN-13: 978-1569471463
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,049,586 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Truth and poetry, May 29, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: In the Empire of Dreams (Hardcover)

I love this book. I think it's going to be a classic. I'm both Japanese and American, living for now in Tokyo, and I think Dianne Highbridge expresses the nuances of the relationships between people of different cultures with true art, and without condescending to anyone. (I've read more than enough books by Westerners about Japan that do just that). And she's written the best book (fiction) about a city and its atmosphere that I've ever read. She writes like a dream. There are so many small, beautiful details. She seems to notice everything, even the crow shifting its claws 'impatiently' on the branch, waiting for its chance to grab a cake off a grave. But I've read several reviews of 'In the Empire of Dreams', and none of them have mentioned one other thing --- that she's also very funny. Even the title makes you smile, when you learn what the Empire of Dreams is. I smiled at poor Gwyneth trying to 'pay her respects' at the family shrine and do it right, and I laughed out loud at other things, though sometimes it's so touching you don't know whether to laugh or cry. Sometimes you can only cry. Dianne Highbridge knows how to make you see people as they really are, and how hard it is for them to understand each other. She knows how to tell a love story, too. I identified completely with Cathy's passion for the potter, and how deeply confused she was by the intense experience. (Some really memorable descriptions here, the way the late afternoon sun catches on the top of the mountain, and 'spills down the side like one of his own glazes,' and the way 'flames ripple around the stacked pots in translucent waves' in the kiln). I loved the way people's lives touched in this book, sometimes without them really knowing, just as it happens in real life. This book shouldn't be read as telling only about Japan, it's about life, and some of its big questions. But I know my sense of the places she writes about is so heightened by reading this book, and the characters are so real to me, that I'm already going around Tokyo thinking, 'this is where Teruko and Larry might have been when...' In this respect it's like the classic stories of American expatriates in France in an earlier era, like Scott Fitzgerald --- but this is a contemporary woman writer, writing about the E.Asian experience at the end of the century. Now I'm going to read Dianne Highbridge's other novel, 'A Much Younger Man.' I feel great confidence in this writer, and I can't wait to see what she does with a story that has a different background and theme.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautifully done, June 24, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: In the Empire of Dreams (Hardcover)

These loosely connected stories of expatriates in Japan (mostly women) portray the push-pull of living in a foreign culture. Although fictional, the experiences felt recognizable to me from my own couple of years living in another country. I look forward to future books by this author.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Caution:Japan-ophiles: this book is addictive., July 11, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: In the Empire of Dreams (Hardcover)

From the first page, this beguiling book lures the reader into a strange, exotic world. The cast of characters-mainly expatriate Brits and Aussies- but, also Japanese, expatriates in the confusing world of contradiction that is modern Japan- tell their tales with lyrical starkness. One or two phrases place the reader right in the midst of the struggle to triumph over transplanted self that is central to this beautiful, moving book. And always, in every page, every paragraph, there is a nearly visible example of beauty and grandeur , celebrating the tiniest of things, impressing them on your memory. Bravo, Ms Highbridge.