Mayumi and the Sea of Happiness by Jennifer Tseng

Mayumi and the Sea of Happiness by Jennifer Tseng

Finalist for the 2016 PEN AWARD for Debut Fiction

Books may be Mayumi Saito's greatest love and her one source of true pleasure. Forty-one years old, disenchanted wife and dutiful mother, Mayumi's work as a librarian on a small island off the coast of New England feeds her passion for reading and provides her with many occasions for wry observations on human nature, but it does little to remedy the mundanity of her days. That is, until the day she issues a library card to a shy seventeen-year-old boy and swiftly succumbs to a sexual obsession that subverts the way she sees the library, her family, the island she lives on, and ultimately herself.
 
Wary of the consequences of following through on her fantasies, Mayumi hesitates at first. But she cannot keep the young man from her thoughts. After a summer of overlong glances and nervous chitchat in the library, she finally accepts that their connection is undeniable. In a sprawling house emptied of its summer vacationers, their affair is consummated and soon consolidated thanks to an explosive charge of erotic energy. Mayumi's life is radically enriched by the few hours each week that she shares with the young man, and as their bond grows stronger thanks not only to their physical closeness but also to their long talks about the books they both love, those hours spent apart seem to Mayumi increasingly bleak and intolerable. As her obsession worsens, in a frantic attempt to become closer to the young man, Mayumi nervously befriends another librarian patron, the young man's mother. The two women forge a tenuous friendship that will prove vital to both in the most unexpected ways when catastrophe strikes.
 
Exquisitely written, Mayumi and the Sea of Happiness is part wry confession, part serious meditation. At its most anxious, it's a book about time, at its most ecstatic, it's a deeply human story about pleasure.

Jennifer Tseng's debut book, The Man With My Face, received the National Poetry Manuscript Competition of the Asian American Writers' Workshop in 2005 and the PEN American Center Open Book Prize in 2006. Mengying Han and Aaron Crippen contributed Chinese translations to her second book, Red Flower, White Flower, which won the Marick Press Poetry Award. Her debut novel is Mayumi and the Sea of Bliss. On Martha's Vineyard, she works at the West Tisbury Library.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781609452698
ISBN 10	1609452690
Title	Mayumi and the Sea of Happiness
Author	Jennifer Tseng
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Europa Editions
Year published	2015-05-14
Number of pages	272
Prizes	Commended for Literary Award (Debut Fiction) 2016
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.