ME, Tomoyuki Hoshino
ME, Tomoyuki Hoshino
List: $16.99 | Sale: $11.89
Club: $8.49

ME

Author: Tomoyuki Hoshino, Charles De Wolf

Narrator: David Shih

Unabridged: 8 hr 20 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 06/13/2017

Categories: Fiction, Psychological


Synopsis

This novel centers on the “It’s me” telephone scam—often targeting the elderly—that has escalated in Japan in recent years. Typically, the caller identifies himself only by saying, “Hey, it’s me,” and goes on to claim in great distress that he’s been in an accident or lost some money with which he was entrusted at work, etc., and needs funds wired to his account right away.

ME’s narrator is a nondescript young Tokyoite named Hitoshi Nagano who, on a whim, takes home a cell phone that a young man named Daiki Hiyama accidentally put on Hitoshi’s tray at McDonald’s. Hitoshi uses the phone to call Daiki’s mother, pretending he is Daiki, and convinces her to wire him 900,000 yen.

Three days later, Hitoshi returns home from work to discover Daiki’s mother there in his apartment, and she seems to truly believe Hitoshi is her son. Even more bizarre, Hitoshi discovers his own parents now treat him as a stranger; they, too, have a “me” living with them as Hitoshi. At a loss for what else to do, Hitoshi begins living as Daiki, and no one seems to bat an eye.

About Tomoyuki Hoshino

Tomoyuki Hoshino was born in 1965 in Los Angeles, but moved to Japan when he was two. After graduating from college, he worked as a journalist at one of Japan's major newspapers, then went to Mexico for further study and fell in love with soccer and Latin America. He made his debut as a writer in 1998 with the novella Saigo no toiki (Last Gasp), which won the Bungei Prize. In 2000, he established his reputation as a serious literary writer with the novel Mezameyo to ningyo wa utau, which won the Mishima Yukio Prize. Fantajisuta was awarded the Noma Prize for New Writers in 2003. Hoshino employs a highly original style that subverts and plays with unconventional scenarios. His other works include the novels Ronri hatsu kira (Lonely Hearts Killer) and Niji to Kuroe no monogatari.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Kinga

This book is misleading. It most definitely does not do what it says on the tin. The reader goes in thinking it will be some fast-paced thriller (with possible sci-fi elements) based on a popular phone scam in Japan. What the reader gets instead is an opaque and concept-heavy tale about identity, a......more

Goodreads review by Keith

This is probably a good book, but my ability to determine if this is indeed the case was undone by poor translation. The translator appears to have been, let me guess, a retired English as a second language teacher who has been living in Japan for the past 50 years. The main difficulty the translato......more

Goodreads review by Wes

I love this book. I am this book. WE are this book. Satisfies many of my own personal itches; if you at all share any of the following, read this book: -love for crowded urban settings -themes of personal identity and dissolution -borderline unlikable protagonist that you feel bad for relating to - su......more

Goodreads review by Richard

Contemporary writers in no other country rival the novelists of Japan in their exploration of issues of identity, authenticity, individuality and community. Perhaps it is because no other country has the same experience of melding a collectivist culture with capitalism and European individualism. Ko......more

Goodreads review by Fatima

I felt that I no longer knew a single human being. Who were my friends, my colleagues, my mother, my father, my siblings? I had no idea, and thus I was equally ignorant of my own identity.......more