#BlogTour-‘Falling From The Floating World’ by Nick Hurst

About the Book….

When Ray is sacked from his advertising job in London, he goes to Japan hoping to start his life afresh. Things begin well: he lands work as an English teacher and strikes up a relationship with the beautiful, intriguing Tomoe. But his world is turned upside down when Tomoe’s father is found dead.
Convinced that his death was a murder, Tomoe sets out after the killers, and when she goes missing Ray is forced to act. In his quest to find her he’s dragged into the ‘floating world’ – a place of corrupt politicians, yakuza, sumo wrestlers and call-girls – living out an adventure that echoes his dreams of Tokyo’s feudal past.
It’s a search guaranteed to bring further loss of life, and Ray is pulled into a desperate chase to ensure it won’t be his.

Welcome to my blog tour review of ‘‘Falling From The Floating World’ by Nick Hurst from Unbound . Thanks to Anne Cater of Random Things for my gifted copy of the book.

What an absolutely fascinating book this was! I enjoyed eveything about it from the insight into Japanese culture to the actual layout of the book and more.

Each chapter begins with a black and white Japanese print, there are instructions at the beginning on how to pronounce keywords so that even though you are reading, not speaking, it did make a difference on how you ‘said’ the characters names in your head(I hope that makes sense!) such as with the main character’s girlfriend Tomoe. I felt it brought you closer to the very distinctive world that Nick was describing.

For anyone with a keen thirst for Japanese culture, or whose interest gets pinged by ‘Floating World,’ Nick cleverly balances a tense and involving storyline with lots of references to further reading withou t making it dry. This is the first book I have read set in Japan in a very long time and the suggested texts have me keen to read more.

The story is really involving, it is told from the perspective of a British man in Japan who , finding himself made redundant and on the suggestion of a friend as he had lived there before, throwing caution to the wind and ending up back there.

Noticing the contrast between the country he knew then and now, he gives us the perfect outsider looking in perspective which really draws the reader in and whilst the Floating world is a Japanese cultural concept, you wonder as a reader, if Japan itself is the floating world the dream like state from which no one really wants to awaken.

It is a literal and metaphorical fall that precipates this beautifully rendered tale-the fall of Tomoe’s father from a bridge and Ray’s fall into reality and away from his self constructed shell. He uses his outsider perspective as a form of protection, in my humble opinion, to not be present but also detached from his life. He has some stark wake up calls and I loved the interplay between Ray and Tomoe as he has to get himself out of his comfort zone, ask himself how much Tomoe really means and whether he is really living in Japan or simply floating there.

There are so lovely metaphors for existence in this book, a beautifully rendered love story , moments that alleviate the plot and a mystery to solve in an enigmatic setting which I will revisit in the future for sure.

One of my favourite parts was Ray being visited by a yakuza representative and asking him to have tea-it’s so British and at the same time totally represents how dissociated Ray is. The rep sort of saying ‘Go on then,’ as they have a gentlemanly discussion about not wanting to resort to violence so if Ray and Tomoe could stop asking questions about her father’s death that would be great tickled me a lot and was just one of many highlights I could name.

A thoroughly recommended read from me, and more thanks to the wonderful Anne Cater who recommends the best books for blogtours, and the author for my gifted copy of his wonderful book.

‘Falling From The Floating World’ is avaialble now.

About the Author…

Nick Hurst spent three years training with a kung fu master in Malaysia to write his first book, Sugong, which
was published in 2012. He has written for the Guardian and Time Out. He lives in Japan.

Twitter @NickHurst8