num_pages: 271
description: This compelling novel widely acclaimed for its perceptive portrayal of the everyday lives and struggles of Japanese women struck a deep chord with readers throughout Japan. In 2005 it won the prestigious Naoki Prize awarded semiannually for the best work of popular fiction by an establishedwriter.Sayoko a thirty-five-year-old homemaker with a three-year-old child begins working for Aoi a free-spirited single career woman her own age who runs a travel agency-housekeeping business. Timid and unable to connect with other mothers in her neighborhood Sayoko finds herself drawn to Aoi'sindependent lifestyle and easygoing personality. The two hit it off from the start beginning a friendship that is for Sayoko also a reaffirmation of what living is about.Aoi meanwhile has not always been the self-confident person she appears to be. Severe classroom bullying in junior high had forced her to change schools uprooting her and her family to the countryside; and at her new school she was so afraid of again becoming the object of her classmates'cruelties that she spent most of her time steering clear of those around her.The present-day friendship between Sayoko and Aoi on the one hand and Aoi's painful high school past on the other form a gripping two-tier narrative that converges in the final chapter. The book touches on a broad range of issues of concern to women today from marriage and childrearing to beingsingle and working for oneself. It is a universal story about both the fear and the joy of opening up to others.
language: English
title: Woman on the Other Shore: A Novel
publisher: Kodansha USA