Makoto

In 1971, a 12-year-old Japanese girl looks on in horror as her beloved brother, with whom she has just consummated an incestuous relationship, commits seppuku (ritual suicide). A decade and a half later, she is the divorced wife of a psychotic American businessman, trying to make her way alone in New York after only a year in this country. But Makoto Leigh is still haunted by the events of her past, especially by her brother's final word-- oni (demon)--which she interprets as a threat that she will one day have to confront supernatural forces. She is alternately harassed and pursued by the strange men in her life: her ex-husband, her licentious landlord, the wild drunk in the apartment above who is crazed by the disappearance of his own Japanese wife, an old neighborhood character who, unlike the others, befriends her. As Makoto girds her loins to face the menace she knows awaits her, her life becomes more and more strange. So, unfortunately, does Wilde's ( The Suiting ) prose, replete with crude sexual imagery and language made even more awkward by footnotes necessary to explain specific Japanese concepts and phraseology. Even the most careful reader will experience confusion in the stylistic sizzle of these pages, and some will find the story virtually incomprehensible. (July)