Customer Reviews

In the Empire of Dreams

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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.

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.

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.

Living the life of a gaijin in Japan... a strange experience indeed. I was there, for almost 20 years. During that time, I read several books about foreigners building lives in Tokyo or elsewhere, but none of them quite rang true because none of them managed to convey that extraordinary mixture of opportunities, frustrations, comfort, misunderstanding and that totally "sucked-in" effect. Dianne Highbridge does. And how! Her Tokyo is the real one. Whether you were an English teacher or an expat, you will recognise part of yourself and your life there in her stories. And if you have never been anywhere near Japan and think of it only as a land of cherry trees and high technology, read these stories for a glimpse into the most accessible of Never-Never Lands, or is it the most inaccessible of quasi-Western societies?

This novel is less about Japan and the expat existence, and more about the celebrations and despairs of everday life. The exotic setting is finely drawn, but it is a backdrop to the compelling heart of the novel, universal themes that every reader will recognise; a failing marriage, unfulfilling careers, new love, temptation, grief, displacement, depression. My favourite story was Claudine's, comfortable in her new homeland but a stranger in her marriage. This novel is a sophisticated, mature debut from a gifted writer. You may learn something about Japan from this novel; you will certainly learn about yourself.

One of the things I love about Dianne Highbridge's linked stories about Tokyo residents and visitors is the characters. You're drawn right into their inner lives and feel an immediate intimacy with them. Some are Japanese, most western, all believable. Even the people on the periphery are filled-in, in a satisfying way. Another thing I loved was that these stories come out of character, and each has its own momentum - with something important at stake. Yet there are no facile resolutions. The situations play out with complexity and shading. By the way, Tokyo also seems like a character, and the countryside as well, and the place descriptions are fresh and organic to the story.

I also loved the humor. It's not ha-ha, but a wry, sometimes sharply seasoned sensibility running through the stories, often with a sad-flavored underside. Not that the book is a downer. It isn't. It's nuanced, mature, rich. One of the reviewers on the book cover wrote, "Bittersweet," and that says it. A kind of Japanese beauty that's both stark and evocative (actually "stark" doesn't capture it - Dianne Highbridge could say it better) infuses these stories. You get right to the essence of the characters and their situations.

Dianne Highbridge is a gifted writer in command of her craft. She doesn't hit us over the head with it but just uses it masterfully to tell the stories. I cannot recommend In the Empire of Dreams highly enough. It has soul, and it breathes. I loved it and will read it again and again.