Kwaidan Book Club: The Love We Share Without Knowing

“Tokyo was an origami city folded over and over until something was made of virtually nothing.” —Christopher Barzak, The Love We Share Without Knowing

Hello All! As selected during today's meeting, our May read will be The Love We Share Without Knowing by Christopher Barzak. Join us on Sunday, May 15th as we discuss this haunting novel of modern life in Japan that explores the ties that bind humanity in a "Murakamiesque jewel box" of intertwined narratives, where the lives of several strangers are gently linked through love, loss, and fate. 

For those who do not have the time to read the chosen pieces of literature, please do not hesitate to come! We welcome you to come just for the discussion :-)

*Please help support Tubby & Coo's Mid-City Book Shop by ordering your copy through them. Make sure to mention that it is for the Kwaidan Book Club (Japan Society of New Orleans's Book Club) for a special discount :-)*

ABOUT THE BOOK:
On a train filled with quietly sleeping passengers, a young man’s life is forever altered when he is miraculously seen by a blind man. In a quiet town an American teacher who has lost her Japanese lover to death begins to lose her own self. On a remote road amid fallow rice fields, four young friends carefully take their own lives—and in that moment they become almost as one. In a small village a disaffected American teenager stranded in a strange land discovers compassion after an encounter with an enigmatic red fox, and in Tokyo a girl named Love learns the deepest lessons about its true meaning from a coma patient lost in dreams of an affair gone wrong.

From the neon colors of Tokyo, with its game centers and karaoke bars, to the bamboo groves and hidden shrines of the countryside, these souls and others mingle, revealing a profound tale of connection—uncovering the love we share without knowing. 


ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Christopher Barzak is the author of the Crawford Award winning novel, One for Sorrow, which was recently made into the Sundance Feature Film, "Jamie Marks is Dead" (to be released August, 29, 2014). His second book, The Love We Share Without Knowing, was a finalist for the Nebula and Tiptree Awards. His most recent books are Birds and Birthdays, a collection of surrealist fantasy stories, and Before and Afterlives, a collection of supernatural fantasies, which won the Shirley Jackson Award for Best Single-Author Collection, 2013. He grew up in rural Ohio, has lived in a southern California beach town, the capital of Michigan, and has taught English in suburban and rural communities outside of Tokyo, Japan, where he lived for two years. Currently he teaches fiction writing in the Northeast Ohio MFA program at Youngstown State University.