Customer Reviews

The Island of Bicycle Dancers: A Novel

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It is said that the best way to really learn a language is through immersion. By relying on the language for your everyday survival, you can completely internalize and understand it, and use idioms and slang. In his novel THE ISLAND OF BICYCLE DANCERS, Jiro Adachi builds on this basic idea and presents a tale not only of language and culture but also of family, friendships, sexuality and self-awareness.

A unique take on both coming-of-age stories and immigrant stories, Adachi's novel centers on Yurika Song, a twenty-year-old woman from Japan who is in America for the first time, ostensibly to learn English. An aimless, lazy young woman, Yurika finds herself in New York City with her Korean relatives. Working at their convenience store under the watchful eye of her resentful aunt, she begins to learn American English from the customers and neighbors she meets every day. She also becomes friends with a group of bicycle messengers who frequent the store; she is fascinated by their slang and attracted to their rebellious lifestyle. As she becomes close with one messenger in particular, she is drawn to another one who she often sees riding by.

Whitey, an eccentric messenger with a smile full of crooked teeth, is immediately smitten by Yurika. She loves his use of language and his openness. They become friends, and Whitey shows her a magical New York City. However, as Whitey's feelings for Yurika grow stronger and stronger, she begins a highly charged affair with Bone, a messenger considered an outsider even within the messenger subculture. As things between Yurika and Bone heat up and tensions arise between them and Whitey, their misunderstood relationship is the catalyst for tragic violence.

Suddenly Yurika's American experience is torn apart at the seams. She must face painful loss amid growing family tensions. Just as she must come to terms with the truth about her relationships with both Whitey and Bone, she must finally confront the truth about her choices in the past and her relationship with her family.

THE ISLAND OF BICYCLE DANCERS is full of interesting and well-written characters. Yurika's culture shock in New York easily could have overtaken the story, but Adachi wisely wrote her emotional growth as the most important component of the story. The book could also have been overcome with details, as there are several interesting story lines --- but again, Adachi controls his story and characters with a seemingly natural ease.

This novel is an enjoyable and unpredictable read. Yurika is surrounded by many teachers who most unwittingly guide her in her transformation from a selfish and unmotivated girl to a thoughtful and driven woman. Her transformation does not happen easily; her maturity and independence are hard-earned. Adachi is successful at blending this realism into a story that is also concerned with the magic and mystery of language.

Written with an uncommon sensitivity, Adachi's debut is all at once about love, friendship, sex, language, family, immigration and growing up. Yurika is a likeable though realistically flawed protagonist, and is a great vehicle for Adachi's intelligent and insightful style.

--- Reviewed by Sarah Rachel Egelman

Imagine going to a country in which you do not speak the language. Your parents have sent you to live with your aunt and uncle to prevent the "bad" influences from your own country from affecting you. When you reach this new country you quickly find the only relief you have from an overbearing aunt is the bicyle messanger gangs that roam through the city and learning the slang language that they speak. Throw in a case of mistaken love, a death of a close friend, learning a new language, and most importantly who you are and you have discovered the beautiful story the The Island of the Bicycle Dancers by Jiro Adachi. I highly recommend this to adults and older teen readers.

An uneven, but enjoyable debut by Mr. Adachi!

This coming of age story centers around Yurika Song, a half-Japanese, half-Korean young woman who comes to New York to stay with her Korean relatives. Exiled to America by her exasperated parents due to her wild lifestyle back in Japan, Yurika works at her uncle and aunt's deli and soon becomes friendly with the bike messengers who come in daily.

Adachi has a wonderful style of writing. With a few choice words, he throws you into the fast-paced, liberating world of bike messengers, the quiet rapture of Yurika's love of the English language, and the mean-spirited, claustrophobic life of Yurika's aunt. Plotwise, the story lags after the first half, but I was driven to finish nonetheless and eagerly await the next book out of this author.

I picked this book off the library shelf several months ago, more or less at random. I read it and enjoyed it - it is well written and offers a glimpse into experiences I know nothing about: immigrants, bicycle messengers, New York itself, for that matter.

More important, however, is that I am still thinking about it months later, still remembering bits of dialog, actions and reactions, places. Even after many intervening books and significant events in my own life.

This is a memorable book.

"Island of Bicycle Dancers" is the coming-of-age story of Yuriko, who was sent to America by her parents in Japan because of all the trouble she was in over there. She lives with her Korean relatives, and she has an antagonistic relationship with her aunt. She secretly begins to learn English, with the help of her cousin, and later a bicycle messenger named Whitey and her uncle's Thai paramour. Yuriko falls hard for the badboy messenger Hector (aka Bone), and this set off a chain of events that ultimately leads to tragedy as someone close is killed as result of Bone's actions. The novel does bring Manhattan to life, and does explore the uneasy relations between Koreans and Japanese, but the relationships don't make sense, and there's a ghost talking to Yuriko after a tragic death.

I read this cover to cover not because I found it interesting but because this novel contains a specific form of racism that I am particularly interested in to study. In this regard, this novel offered an excellent example of racism and I wanted to thank the author for his unconscious/conscious portrayal of minorities. The protagonist Eureka girl came in quite handy for her ESL situation; she is a combo case of being dumb and ESL. I believe anything would pass for the author's being half-Asian (Japanese) and that entitled him to represent the people in the name of representing all non-white in this questionable manner: he might be unconscious but his point of view is pretty much one of white male's. The tokenism allows hime to use Japan or Japanese/Asian people as only the narrative device because the perspective he employs here is just objectifying and so steteptypical. His character actually apologized for being who she was---Japanese---and this made such a strong statement (of how ignorant the author is). This story did not make much sense and his idea and/or knowledge about Korean-Japanese historical relationship up to present seemed just superficial. But he wanted to use it, to show off? I mark this novel for its need of careful examination (for its toxic and friendly form of racism).