Naoko Book

Winner of the Japan Mystery Writers Award, 'Naoko' is a black comedy of hidden minds and lives. Navigating the interstices between the real and the unreal with perfect plot twists, it is also a critique of gender relations by a male Japanese writer, one of their best-selling.

An everyman, Heisuke works hard at a factory job to provide for his wife, Naoko, and young daughter, Monami. He takes pleasure from small things, like breakfast with both of them after a night shift. His placid life is rocked when, looking up from his microwave dinner one evening, he realizes that the TV news that he wasn't paying attention to is reporting a catastrophic bus accident and the names of his loved ones.

When Monami finally wakes up from a coma, she seems to think she's Naoko, who has died protecting her daughter. More disturbingly, the girl knows things only Naoko could know.