Ghost of a smile

Ghost of a smile is a collection of 8 short stories in modern day Tokyo.
This was a very entertaining read. It is written by, Deborah Boliver Boehm, an American whose well aquainted with japanese culture. Her western take on things made it easy for me, a non-japanese interested in japan to learn more about this mysterious culture. There were many different charachters in her stories like a sumo wrestler, a goldfish seller, a teenage japanese girl, a librarian and many more. The stories combined the natural with the supernatural, the east, with the west in a witty delightful erotic way. The story takes you in, I personally couldn't put the book down. It just takes you to a different world where everything is possible and gives you a closer peek to the everyday life of Tokyo. Each story was unique in its own way, and totally different from the other yet there was a resemblance in some aspects in all stories. They all had some relation to japanese mythology and the supernatural world and most of them were about love, lust and desire. Her style is a comibination between american modern in search of romance type of novels, spiritual questioning afterlife and the unknown books and fantasy ghost stories. I wouldn't say that it is an intellectual literary book that you would think about when you put down, I would say it's more of cross cultural book that would make you well aquainted with japanese culture and a delightful collection that would transfer you in a three, if not 4 or even more, dimensional world.