Thomas B. Reverdy: Les Évaporés (2013)

Les Évaporés is Thomas B. Reverdy's Japan book, which he wrote at the Villa Kujoyama in Kyoto in 2012, and which is influenced by the American writer Richard Brautigan: two of Brautigan's quotations are given at the front of the book, a number of his quotations are included in the novel itself in italics, and Brautigan too spent some time in Japan and (briefly) married a Japanese woman.

Brautigan killed himself, disappeared, but not in the same way as the johatsu, the essential subjects of this book. They disappear, or 'evaporate', and very often never return: disappearance not in itself being a crime, the police have no interest in it. Disappearance is, for instance in times of debt, seen as the honourable way to go in order to avoid one's family paying the money owed.

 And so begins the story here, with down-at-heel private eye, er. Richard B. – who needs him these days with the internet doing the work for you? – in San Francisco, and who's probably too fond of whiskey for his own good, being contacted by his former girlfriend Yukiko, a San Francisco barmaid: her mother in Japan has contacted her to tell her that her huband (Yukiko's father) has become one of the disappeared. Obviously, Yukiko wants her ex-boyfriend to help her out, and prints out online tickets for them both.

So begins a 300-page story – which is really two stories because we also discover what happens to the father Kazehiro. And all this is set against Japan's triple whammy – the tsunami, the earthquake, and the nuclear power disaster Fukushima. Reverdy also includes a fair bit about Japanese society in this interesting story.

My Thomas B. Reverdy posts:
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Thomas B. Reverdy: Les Évaporés
Thomas B. Reverdy: Il était une ville