The End of the Moment We Had

Okada delivers a pair of intriguing novellas set in Tokyo for his first book to be published in the U.S. In the title novella, set during the early aughts, a bored young man named Azuma splits off from his hard-partying friends at an open mic night and disappears with a lonely girl. Together at one of the city’s love hotels, they engage in a four-night marathon of revelatory sex that sends Okada’s prose spiraling into ecstasy. The second story, “My Place in Plural” is as sedate as the first story is frenzied, featuring the interior monologue of a bored and sedentary housewife as, in a clever send-up of modern tech dependency, she obsesses over her phone, laptop, and television while her marriage and even her home collapses around her. The climax, if there is one, comes either when she decides to sever the cord of her husband’s game system or when she throws her phone at a cockroach. These novellas showcase Okada’s ability to completely inhabit the consciousness of crowds and characters, in both ferocious extremity and repose. (Sept.)