Shopping [Paperback]

Gavin Kramer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 2003

An awkward English lawyer on business in Tokyo becomes obsessed with a teenage Japanese girl who lives to shop. Shopping won the David Higham Prize, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, and was short-listed for the Whitbread First Novel Award.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

British author Kramer sets his entertaining debut novel amid the neon lights and high-fashion, high-tech madness of bustling Tokyo, where a chilly Englishman embarks on an unusually mysterious and frustrating erotic adventure with a 16-year-old Japanese girl. Alistair Meadowlark, an awkwardly tall, perpetually bumbling expatriate lawyer, takes a two-year assignment in Japan, endeavoring to make his employers happy and his parents proud. Holding up the ideals of duty and honor, 34-year-old Meadowlark is dull but seemingly infallible and incorruptible, never partaking in the flesh parade of the red-light district. Never, that is, until he meets Sachiko, an exceedingly glamorous fashionista schoolgirl with whom he becomes obsessed. The narrator is an unnamed colleague and fellow expatriate who charts Meadowlark's trajectory towards a nervous breakdown as he falls for the icy, childishly demanding but alluring clotheshorse. Like all other young Japanese women in the novel, she is painted as materialistic in the extreme. Sachiko finds little use for her Caucasian suitors except to milk them for the latest Prada, Chanel and Gucci outfits. When she moves on to a richer beau, the distraught Meadowlark takes out his frustrations on a client and loses his job at the law firm. In a comedic denouement that just keeps getting nuttier, he storms Sachiko's home and proceeds to show her parents compromising photos of their daughter. The East vs. West culture clash is reiterated throughout the book, as is the cultural clash between generations of Japanese: teens see their workaholic "salarymen" fathers as pedestrian stiffs and wealthy "gaijin" as a ticket to a more luxurious lifestyle. Meanwhile, salarymen, expats and billionaires alike are agog at petulant baby-women like Sachiko. Kramer's measured narrative style turns what could be a mere exhibition of high-rolling, high-tech and high-contrast Tokyo into an absorbing cautionary tale. Agent, Henry Dunow. (Apr.) FYI: Shopping won the 1998 David Higham Prize and the 1999 Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, and was short-listed for 1999's Whitbread Award.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

The unnamed narrator, an English expatriot working in Tokyo, prides himself on the authenticity of his immersion into Japanese culture. He knows the subtleties of the language, the right clubs to go to at night, and he has been "cultivating an interest in" the Japanese poet Dazai Osamu. Condescending to other expatriots who have not yet reached this level, he nonetheless befriends Alistair Meadowlark, a tall, bulky Englishman. Soon Meadowlark has become enamored of one of the local girls, the 16-year-old Sachiko. Vain and materialistic, Sachiko is a social climber who worships pop culture. The ideals and values of the three main characters clash: the narrator with his pretensions to being totally immersed in Japanese culture; Sachiko, with her unabashed ambition; and Meadowlark, who at first clings to his veneer of English respectability but soon cracks and renounces English life and values. A fascinating first novel that examines how much one's sense of self is defined by one's own culture and the different kinds of effects a foreign culture has on that sense of self. Kristine Huntley --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Soho Press; Reprint edition (July 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1569472297
• ISBN-13: 978-1569472293
• Product Dimensions: 5.6 x 0.6 x 8.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,682,737 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An Old-Fashioned Story Set in A New Time and Place, January 12, 2001

By 

A. Ross (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Shopping (Hardcover)

Despite its hypermodern setting in the world of English expatriates in present-day Tokyo, this slim novel is somewhat old-fashioned in it's contained tale of the arrival of an English lawyer and his subsequent undoing. It's the kind of story that used to be written about a newcomer to colonial Africa who eventually has a nervous breakdown due to his inability to cope with the new culture. Here, the story is narrated by a English Japophile who fancies himself superior to almost all other expatriates due to his superior knowledge of Japanese language and culture and "takes an interest in" an obscure Japanese poet. When a gangly, socially inept newcomer arrives from England, he is befriended by the narrator, who introduces him to the mysteries of Japanese culture. This newcomer falls in with a social climbing Japanese high-school girl who uses him to fulfill all her high-priced shopping needs (in exchange for what is never reliably established). The story follows as the lawyer becomes more and more obsessed with the girl and has a breakdown. Along the way, the narrator interjects a number of vignettes about Japanese culture which, although interesting in and of themselves, come across as somewhat forced as they are entirely unrelated to the main story. To a certain degree the book is trying to say something about the globalization of culture and economies and how that interacts with consumption and personal senses of the self, but it works better as an old-fashioned tale of the Englishman abroad.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Two ancient cultures collide in a new world..., April 30, 2000

By 

pandochka (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Shopping (Hardcover)

...yet inevitably unable to let go of the traditions bestowed on them. Supposedly in the new world order of hypercapitalism (in which shopping is the ultimate mode of expression), capital in the monetary form is the great equalizer. But as Kramer shows us, more than just money is used in negotiating; in this story it is also sex and sophistication that are used as bargaining tools. This is basically an English novel set in Japan, and despite the Asiaphile point of view that starts off the book, Kramer seems to get Japan right and even turns the narrator's (and possibly the author's as well) own fetishization inside out. A great read that explores the clash of tradition and unabashed contemporary consumerism in Japan, as well as the Englishman's need to overthrow icons through extreme and rebellious actions. There are great scenes of the well known parts of Tokyo, like Roponggi and Shibuya, but keep in mind that this is more a story of the English in Tokyo than of Tokyo itself. A confident, well-executed, and entertaining debut.