What's Left of Me Is Yours: A Novel [Hardcover] Scott, Stephanie

Product Description "Each chapter of this enrapturing novel is elegantly brief and charged with barely contained emotion." --New York Times Book ReviewA gripping debut set in modern-day Tokyo and inspired by a true crime, for readers of Everything I Never Told You and The Perfect Nanny, What's Left of Me Is Yours charts a young woman's search for the truth about her mother's life--and her murder.In Japan, a covert industry has grown up around the "wakaresaseya" (literally "breaker-upper"), a person hired by one spouse to seduce the other in order to gain the advantage in divorce proceedings. When Satō hires Kaitarō, a wakaresaseya agent, to have an affair with his wife, Rina, he assumes it will be an easy case. But Satō has never truly understood Rina or her desires and Kaitarō's job is to do exactly that--until he does it too well. While Rina remains ignorant of the circumstances that brought them together, she and Kaitarō fall in a desperate, singular love, setting in motion a series of violent acts that will forever haunt her daughter's life.Told from alternating points of view and across the breathtaking landscapes of Japan, Stephanie Scott exquisitely renders the affair and its intricate repercussions. As Rina's daughter, Sumiko, fills in the gaps of her mother's story and her own memory, Scott probes the thorny psychological and moral grounds of the actions we take in the name of love, asking where we draw the line between passion and possession. Review “Scott deftly exposes how life-limiting even the most well-intentioned lies can be, especially for women in a society that remains as patriarchal as Japan’s. . . For the outsider, What’s Left of Me Is Yours is an extraordinary window onto [Japanese] culture. . . Each chapter of this enrapturing novel is elegantly brief and charged with barely contained emotion. Yet Scott’s subject remains vast: the idea that the law itself does not protect the innocent, and ‘that what matters most is knowledge – of ourselves and others.’”—NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW"Mesmerizing"—LOS ANGELES TIMES"Fascinating...The world [Scott] creates in What's Left of Me Is Yours feels very sure under foot: deeply researched, but delicately described... She braids her different characters' timelines together with sophistication, her storytelling harmoniously well-constructed. The big questions over whether it's better to lie or to tell a difficult truth, and what might constitute a betrayal, are layered across generations and decades and there is strength in the subtlety with which Scott slowly unpacks them."—THE GUARDIAN"Beautiful. I loved it!"—Lisa See, bestselling author of THE ISLAND OF SEA WOMEN“Remember that new-discovery, time-stopping, every-moment-is-magical kind of love? That's what it felt like to read this novel. Then limerence turns to passion which leads to tragedy and suddenly this book is impossible to put down as you speed toward a conclusion that is as surprising as it is satisfying.”—JAMIE FORD, bestselling author of HOTEL ON THE CORNER OF BITTER AND SWEET“Scott deftly spins a web through modern day Tokyo in this captivating dual-perspective rendering of a young woman determined to find out the truth behind her mother's murder.”—NEWSWEEK“Scott poignantly evokes both a mother trapped by the choices made for her and a daughter learning to deal with her own precarious freedom. She clearly defines the unfortunate effects of the traditional Japanese legal system on women, and with carefully accumulated details describes a Japan both physically and psychologically teetering on the edge of change.”—BOOKLIST“[An] intense debut. . . Exhilarating. . . Byzantine subplots, distinctive characters, and atmospheric settings will leave readers spellbound.”—PUBLISHERS WEEKLY“An unusual and stylish story of love and murder...”—KIRKUS REVIEW"A gripping and instantly compelling story about love and loss and how they shape our lives.... This is a cleverly constructed, shrewd and beautiful no