creek photo

Up the Creek Book Club


Home Page
Current Book List
Prior Book Lists
King County Library
Barnes & Noble
Amazon.com


© 2000 Kathy Craig
Site designed by Rainy Day Studios

Audrey Hepburn's Neck

by Alan Brown

April 1998

Synopsis

Audrey Hepburn's Neck"Growing up in a small town on the northernmost island in Japan, {protagonist} Toshi Okamoto has been entranced with all things American since his mother took him to see Roman Holiday for his ninth birthday. . . . Toshi cultivates his fascination with Americans when he moves to Tokyo. There's his best friend, Paul, who has a thing for young Japanese men; emotionally unstable June, his flamboyant English teacher; and endearing Lucy, a talented composer. Under the influence of his talkative American friends, Toshi begins to question his silent, strained relationship with his parents and to explore his own identity through his graphic work for a popular manga comic book." (Booklist)

Reviews

  • "On page after page, Brown's touch, both as observer and stylist, is sure and accurate…. It's a rare writer who combines such delicacy with a zany sense of humor…. [an] acute and acutely funny novel." (Mary Jo Salter - Los Angeles Times Book Review)
  • "Audrey Hepburn's Neck is a wonderful novel…extraordinarily evocative of the mishmash of cultures and mores that is modern Japan…. Alan Brown captures, with great sensitivity, the isolation of a man whose best friend is a wealthy, gay American, whose girlfriends are always American, but whose parents do not speak to one another, nor to him, and who have offered him no hint of his own history…. A lovely book. It made me laugh, it made me cry, and it taught me lots I did not know about another country. You cannot ask much more of a novel." (Mary Loudon - The Times/London)
  • "[A] fascinating first novel…. Audrey Hepburn's Neck is like origami, put together with grace and ingenuity." (Janice Greene - San Francisco Chronicle)

Book Club Rating and Comments

If you or your book club has read this book and would like to share your comments, please email us at upthecreekbc@yahoo.com.

Other Books by Alan Brown

  • (none)