The Method Actors: a novel

by Carl Shuker

Winner of the 2006 Prize in Modern Letters, THE METHOD ACTORS traces the disappearance of a young, gifted military historian named Michael Edwards from his desk in Tokyo and his sister Meredith's return to the city in search of him. Michael's research into international war crimes trials will take his sister through four hundred years of history, myth and propaganda, love and infidelity, religious transport and hallucination.

A cutting-edge debut novel, THE METHOD ACTORS is set in the flux of Tokyo at the turn of the century. With a cast of wealthy, restless New Yorkers, French kitchenhands, Russian hostesses, Canadian exchange students, Australian ex-drug addicts, High Court judges, reclusive cultivators of hallucinogenic mushrooms, and young Chinese Americans living the high life, THE METHOD ACTORS leaps effortlessly from character to character, from past to present, from New York to Wellington to Tokyo.

The rape of Nanking, Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, Japan's quarantining of Dutch merchants on manmade islands in the seventeenth century--all entwine to form a comic, hugely entertaining and often terrifying novel that reveals the dark heart, the centerlessness and moral ambiguity of modern gaijin life in Tokyo. Part historical investigation, part thriller, part love story, THE METHOD ACTORS is stylistically daring, beautifully lucid and stunning in its emotional and intellectual reach. This is a dense and multilevel narrative that questions the moral framework of the modern world.

Genres: Fiction, Japan, Contemporary

512 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[Jack · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hmm.. I wanted to love it, being an avic reader, writer, a New Zealander, a mycology/botany/travel freak, and so forth...


but...

it started out promising... but...

It is so pretentious as to be off-putting. Simply vomiting all your ideas and knowledge/research onto a page really undermines the craft aspect. If that were the intention, we could all be writers in the next 24 hours - as long as we wrote our thoughts down.

It is sprawling, but it is unnerving. All the characters? The dislocated ideas that aren't presented in a very coherent or clear manner? I understood the language, but not all the assertions, or why they were included in the book. So much could have been thrown out. Needs a good edit, could easily be cut down to 250 pages or less.

Other than that, I adored the premised of the novel. The subject matter had me interested. Sadly, it is packed with superfluity.

[Cmbrooks · Rating 3 out of 5]

A long hard book to read, with a background of the modern city of Tokyo and its expatriate young visitors, and of military history. Many drugs are done and much alcohol is drunk. The life of the streets is never far away. Tokyo is contrasted with Christchurch and Wellington, where the small numbers of characters seem to give each a heightened value compared with the crowds of Tokyo. A very modern novel, full of anonymity and cruelty but with memorable and some funny scenes. Shakespeare's Twelfth Night forms a leitmotiv but it is hard to say what point is made thereby. A crowded novel giving the sense of a huge city. I would read more work from this author, hoping he develops his gifts with further experience.

[Kimberley · Rating 2 out of 5]

Couldn't finish it. The book showed promise but I think the author tripped over their cleverness in thinking they had to fill the book with so many pages and ideas. With a hefty edit this book would be a cracker. I guess I was expecting Gibson's pithy genius. Will watch the author and hope they get more succinct with maturity.

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

solid tale from the perspective of multiple characters in various locales of New Zealand, Tokyo, and L.A., but mostly of foreigners in Tokyo

Not a gripping page turner or plot heavy, and quite thick on the metaphors and prose at times with some overly pretentious passages, but some interesting character studies and moods as far as the disconnectedness and loneliness of foreigners in Tokyo

The sections of the book dealing with real world incidents like the Nanking Incident, the Salem Witch Trials and Dejima in Tokugawa era Japan and the potential cause/impact of those events due to ergot mushroom poisoning were definitely the most interesting the novel, if sparse

[severyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mr Shuker may possibly be a good writer; I'm not too sure that this book will be held as his best. The plotting owes just a little too much to David Foster Wallace's 'Infinite Jest', the style just a little too much to a disjointed blend of maybe William Gibson and Haruki Murakami.
But. Still. Not actually horrible, I suppose.

[victoria]

This one is going to be SO much fun!
I GET TO HANG WITH THE COOOOOL KIDS!!!! HA!
Tokyo here I come!
moshi moshi! sushi bar! hostile corporate takeover!
gothic lolita
asian bdsm...
horray!

did i forget anything?

[Daniel · Rating 2 out of 5]

What a weighty book. There was so much going on that I didn't understand what the story was about. The author rambled on so much that it lost its direction. I only finished reading the book because I am one those who must finish reading a book once its started.

Disappointing.

[Cypress Butane · Rating 3 out of 5]

I finished it, but I guess I didn't get it. There was some good stuff along the way, and I liked the writing style, for the most part, but if I missed something in the experimental form, or not, something didn't follow through and it didn't happen for me in the end.

[Constance Plumley · Rating 4 out of 5]

An adventurous romp though the foreigners' Japan. Heady and fast-paced. This novel does not let up for a moment. Interesting bits about Mycology and profound thoughts on the meaning of being male and the atrocity of war and rape and self-destruction.