Almost Japanese

Sheard has always been able to create captivating images. This is particularly true of her very appealing first novel, ALMOST JAPANESE, an exhilarating account of a young girl's infatuation with a Japanese symphony conductor, a man widely believed to have been inspired by Ozawa. In that novel there are exquisite evocations of Canada (Emma's parents give her "a red canvas canoe with honey-coloured ribs") and Japan (where Emma looks down on a "raft of petals, caught under a bridge, quaking below her...") ALMOST JAPANESE also marvellously succeeds because it so cleverly polarizes two very different portraits: the first of Emma, a big, good-hearted, and buoyant girl, the second of the gracious and diminutive Akira in his "indigo kimono, camellia-patterned, white petals across his shoulders." And in Japan, when she gets there, Emma keeps a record of the hilariously illogical English slogans she sees on t-shirts in Tokyo: JUST GOOD. JUST NOW. FRECKLE. on one. And, on another, ASSORT. PERSIST. CONTACT.