The Men in My Country (Sightline Books) [Hardcover]

Marilyn Abildskov (Author)

Book Description

Series: Sightline Books | Publication Date: September 20, 2004

In the early 1990s, at the watershed age of thirty, Marilyn Abildskov decided she needed to start over. She accepted an offer to move from Utah to Matsumoto, Japan, to teach English to junior high school students. “All I knew is that I had to get away and when I stared at my name on the Japanese contract, the squiggles of katakana, my name typed in English sturdily beneath, I liked how it looked. As if it—as if I—were translated, transformed, emerging now as someone new.”

The Men in My Country is the story of an American woman living and loving in Japan. Satisfied at first to observe her exotic surroundings, the woman falls in love with the place, with the light, with the curve of a river, with the smell of bonfires during obon, with blue and white porcelain dishes, with pencil boxes, and with small origami birds. Later, struggling for a deeper connection—“I wanted the country under my skin”—Abildskov meets the three men who will be part of her transformation and the one man with whom she will fall deeply in love.

A travel memoir offering an artful depiction of a very real place, The Men in My Country also covers the terrain of a complex emotional journey, tracing a geography of the heart, showing how we move to be moved, how in losing ourselves in a foreign place we can become dangerously—and gloriously—undone.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Abildskov's debut memoir follows the travails of a thirtysomething ex-pat in a medium-size city in the Japanese mountains. At 31, Abildskov has no career plans, and is still smarting from a failed stateside relationship. To complicate things in her new environs, she becomes involved with three very different men. Amir is a handsome laborer who works in a noodle shop and sends money home to Iran. Despite his sweetness, he's too young, and he has the distressing habit of wearing bright, primary colors--something that, in Japan, only children do. "The professor," a married historian, is too old and easy to dismiss with his polyester suits and shoes bearing little chains. But Nozaki, a businessman, is just right, until he begins to withdraw from Abildskov's interest. What follows is an astonishing and brutally honest portrait of Abildskov's pursuit of Nozaki. After their brief affair ends, and her passions cool, the author returns to graduate school in the U.S., solitary but ready for the future. Of interest to travelers and those who have humiliated themselves at the altar of love. Rebecca Maksel
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

“In this exquisite travel memoir, Marilyn Abildskov unpacks her bags and allows herself to be transformed by all she tastes and touches in Japan: the persimmons, pencil boxes, origami birds, and men—three in particular. The result is an intimate, sensual portrait of a woman and a place. I was enthralled and transported from start to finish.”—Natalia Rachel Singer, author of Scraping By in the Big Eighties

“Marilyn Abildskov is a writer of sheer beauty and rare atmosphere. Each word feels hand-carved from the broken shards of her own life. The Men in My Country is a pathway into longing ‘for ordinary love, for ordinary joy.’ We are brought into soulful dialogue regarding the nature of wanting versus the nature of needing. Japan becomes a rich landscape of love and we accept this exquisite book as the gift of experience. When T. S. Eliot speaks of transient beauty born out of sorrow, he was foreshadowing the writing of Marilyn Abildskov.”—Terry Tempest Williams, author of Refuge, Leap, and Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 168 pages
• Publisher: University Of Iowa Press; 1St Edition edition (September 20, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0877459045
• ISBN-13: 978-0877459040
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 5.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,432,541 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Different than I expected, January 22, 2006

By 

Loves the View "Louise" (Hawaii) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Men in My Country (Sightline Books) (Hardcover)

I picked this up because I thought it was about teaching in Japan. Having taught abroad (China and Egypt), and having taught many Japanese students in the US, I thought it was a travel book about the teaching experience.

It turned out to be something very different. It is common knowledge among expat teachers, that some US men teach abroad to meet women, who "unlike American women, know how to treat a guy". As I got beyond the introductory pages about sensing and "watching" Japan, I wondered if this book was about the reverse, liberated American women shattering a taboo and having sexual exploits in a foreign land.

Further into the book, there is more insight. This is a highly sensitive person, looking for a place, affirmation, love, or maybe permanance in a world that hasn't offered it to her. Needs transcend her awareness of the wake she leaves behind. Despite her deep love (or is it need) for one man, she entertains two others. The man she loves wants her in some way, but is emotionally unavailable. Of the other two, one is married, and the other, as a worker in a noodle factory is not a serious suitor. I would expect that both have emotional scars from their relationship with the author. None of the three men speaks English well enough to have a normal, let alone nuanced, conversation with her.

The book chronicles, after 7 years retrospect, her memories of the encounters, from her observation, along with a backdrop of the intrigue of a foreign adventure.

I would recommend this to anyone going through a romantic breakup. Like a conversation with a fellow sufferer, it could offer a balm. The pain comes through the detail of obsession for the lost. The writing is very good, and I like the remembered conversations italicized and not quoted, since there is no way they can be exact. For those looking for a travel adventure, or insight into teaching English, this is not the book.

The cover is great. The oragami figures in subtle colors clearly evoke Japan.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Amazing Story Made Up Of Perfect Sentences, September 29, 2004

By 

Lesley Quinn (Northern California) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Men in My Country (Sightline Books) (Hardcover)

I could NOT put this book down. Ms. Abildskov has created a story of such difficult beauty and courage, such clear and striking insight, such sweetness and humor and fury, every page took my breath away. A journey, from the moment I opened the book to the wee hours of the morning. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

5.0 out of 5 stars Non-Transient Beauty, December 5, 2010

By 

Julene Bair "Plainswriter" (Longmont, Colorado) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Men in My Country (Sightline Books) (Hardcover)

As one who has been there, denying all evidence that a man is through with me, and as one who has gone to ridiculous lengths trying to get him back, I not only felt less the fool as I read this book, I felt rewarded for having suffered. It helped connect me with the subtle, feminine, honest mind that was revealing itself on the page. Reading Abildskov, I was in more inspiring company than with the man. I agree with Terry Tempest William's praise of this book. "When T. S. Eliot speaks of transient beauty born out of sorrow," this is what he was talking about. Except the beauty is not transient. The sorrow was, but not the beauty. It will last as long as the book exists.