Almost Japanese

""Rationing the everyday things in life gave them magic, Japanese magic,'' muses Emma, the narrator of this precious tale about an awkward adolescent's ephemeral romance with a famous Japanese symphony conductor. Emma focuses with sensitive obsession on the delicate, resonant details of the maestro's existencehis slippers, his tea service, his chest hair peaking above his kimono. She longs for the uncluttered order of his life, the magic of his mind. By the end of the story, Emma has experienced other lovers and manages to mesh her sensual memories of the great conductor with her adult self. Sheard's evocative, sometimes humorous first novel is told with the crystal clarity of haiku. (May)