The Earthquake Bird

The Earthquake Bird is the debut novel by British author Susanna Jones published in 2001. It won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, a Betty Trask Award, and the Crime Writers' Association John Creasy Dagger.[1]

The Earthquake Bird
First edition
AuthorSusanna Jones
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
PublisherPicador
Publication date
2001
Media typePrint
Pages224
AwardsJohn Llewellyn Rhys Prize
Betty Trask Award
CWA New Blood Dagger
ISBN0-330-48501-6

Plot

The story opens in a Tokyo police station where 34-year-old Lucy Fly is being questioned over the murder of her friend Lily Bridges. Lucy has been in Tokyo for 10 years, is fluent in Japanese, and employed in translating manuals into English. She is evasive in her answers to the police but recounts to the readers what led to her current situation: her estrangement from her family in England, her relationship with Teiji, an enigmatic photographer, and the recent arrival of Lily, who - like Lucy - comes from East Yorkshire. On a trip to Sado Island, jealousy appears, and relationships break down.

Reception

Reviews were generally positive :

  • A. N. Wilson in The Telegraph writes "Without giving away the secret, Lucy is obsessed, sexually obsessed, by a young man called Teiji who works in a noodle bar, and who likes taking arty photographs of tall buildings reflected in the puddles of Tokyo's pavements, and of her in the nude. In its spare way, this novel, which I have now read three times, is one of the best accounts - and this is not all that it is - of female sexuality, that subject of and mystery for any male reader. It is not, very decidedly not, a book however which will reveal what 'they' feel when in love, or in bed - only what she, and a pretty distinctive she, feels."[2]
  • Publishers Weekly concludes "The descriptions of Japan's landscapes, language, people and customs are delivered with fluency and intimacy, yet with the slightly detached clarity of an expat. Some readers may find Jones's intermingling of first- and third-person narration self-conscious and distracting...and the hazy ending raises more questions than it answers. But this is less a whodunit than an examination of the slippery nature of truth and memory, obsessions and betrayals, all of which Jones handles with confidence and skill"[3]

Official website

References
  1. British Council. "Susanna Jones | British Council Literature". Literature.britishcouncil.org. Retrieved 2016-04-10.
  2. 'Shocking prose paired with sexual obsession', The Telegraph, 25 Nov 2002 Retrieved 2016-04-11.
  3. www.publishersweekly.com Fiction Book Review Retrieved 2016-04-11.
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