Big in Japan: A Ghost Story by M. Thomas Gammarino
Big in Japan: A Ghost Story by M. Thomas Gammarino, graduate, the MFA in Creative Writing at The New School.
Chin Music Press, 2009
Barnes & Noble: “While playing to lackluster crowds in their hometown of Philadelphia, progressive rock band Agenbite clings to the comforting half-truth that they’re doing better in Japan. When their manager agrees to send them on a shoestring tour of that country, however, they’re swiftly forced to give up their illusions and return stateside.
All but one of them, that is.
Brain Tedesco, the band’s variously haunted chief composer, has fallen in love with a part-time sex worker—the first woman ever to have touched him—and his illusions have only just begun. What ensues is a Dantesque coming-of-age tale in which Brain must navigate the borderlands between fantasy and reality, past and present, sex and death—even as forces beyond his control conspire to undo him.
By turns compassionate and ruthless, erotic and grotesque, riotously serious and deadly funny, Big in Japan is a sparkling, gut-wrenching, face-melting debut novel.”