This book is an action-packed, wild, not terribly sexual for a change and weirdly moral violent romp - though I wouldn't call it family-oriented, as it involves a degree of pedophilia. It's set mostly in Japan, by a British author who writes notably enough to fill up 200 fast-paced pages with his own curious blend of English panache and Japanese lingual élan.
Jif Kitchen is an overweight, paunchy, sweaty old Brit, mired in his boring job - until he gets the exciting opportunity to work for Lime.Inc. They deal underground with the British government in some pretty scary-sounding and elaborate secret weapons. The writing as it opens is well-paced, with only a few spelling and grammar errors - nothing that detracts from enjoyment of the author's enchantingly intriguing style. He uses mostly a Tell and Show technique, with plenty of Show-based spicy elements; his overall writing I found to be personable and warm, making me want to read on much further.
Jif immediately meets snarly Japanese men when he disembarks onto Frontiera Island, a fictitious Japanese locale manufactured for this book, but based on the real and mysterious Gunkanjima Island. Jif worries that these men are Yakuza, which later becomes a well-founded fear. Seriously overweight, Jif now works for a crooked company which slowly devalues him as a person, and he only has a smattering of people in his life - thus the title, "The Lonely Walk" - which also refers to Jif's steady decline in prestige throughout the book.
In the first chapter, Jif is almost shot, his young bodyguard Charlie Ronshoe taking the bullet, causing the older Jif to mourn frequently and evocatively. This becomes the main theme for the book's overall tensions. Several intense and exciting scenes ensue from here, building the suspense somewhat, though there's an absence of genuinely gripping fear due to the book jumping back - and forth - and around - in time an awful lot. I found this to be rather distracting, but not too difficult to follow, due to the author placing a time stamp on each section of the book that enabled me to follow all of the action.
Jif is deeply entrenched in his new job at Lime.Inc, which sells to underground arms dealers among others. His young wife springs to his side when Charlie dies, as well as throughout most of this exciting and action-movie-oriented read. I think this book would indeed make a terrific film, but the author/screenwriter would first need to solve the problem about how it skips around it time repeatedly. I kept waiting to be able to just read without feeling perplexed.
At first, there's a flashback to earlier in the day Charlie was killed, of course this being when he was still alive. After that, it turns out Jif's wife is Japanese, named Yuzuyu, and suddenly we flash back to a major tsunami - an exciting action sequence which is graphically described, but in fairly Spartan detail - involving Yuzuyu's original boyfriend, who dies.
We return to Jif with the dead Charlie in an ambulance. There's plenty of British and Japanese terminology, which an American like me usually has some trouble following, but I felt like I was learning as I read. At first when I saw that Yuzuyu was wearing a "diaper," I thought this was some new British slang for underwear; but she is actually incontinent, genuinely wearing a diaper. She is also only 15 years old - sweet, innocent, pale and innocuous.
Then There is another flashback. They begin to frequent and very hard, and I'd like to see a simple plot. It turns out to be married to his wife Jif was 14 years, and now is in trouble on it Lime.Inc. Things suddenly walk all the way until 1810, with a history of coal mining on Gunkanjima Jif and realizes that his company only a "facade" to store weapons for the British army.
Next, we find that Jif died young womanpreviously, was cryogenically frozen, and was somehow revived, albeit with a serious incontinency problem. This is all starting to get pretty interesting, and I was wondering what would happen to this somewhat illegitimate but loving and beleaguered couple, who appear to really love each other. Things get emotional when a black man accuses Jif of failure, and he seems weak at this point and less sympathetic, though he had saved his wife's life on several occasions. This "failure scene" turns out to be a dream sequence, the sort of thing which crops up later, and then things are back to square one after Charlie's death; apparently we're on a normal track again.
Or are we? No, it's time for another flashback, to when Jif and Charlie met. These interruptions were really getting annoying; but the writing was still fast-paced, brilliant and decent enough to keep me reading it. Jif had met Charlie by defending him from a bevy of beauties who were accusing him of being "a Pervert, "which came in his all-girl dormitory. But Charlie has done only at MIT. In a somewhat 'corny Jif is now reminds me of the character of Monk on TV when it is useful and often saves people, but decays very easily and is soft and mouse-like. But this element of his character breaks down quickly as the book, but falls Jif is also to be family-oriented kind of guy and a gentleman to know that
There's more than moving, interspersed with a lotfast action and screaming shoot-'em-up sequences. This whole thing was reminding me of a manga, or Japanese-style comic book, in its style and presentation - I felt like flipping the book around and reading it right to left, in Japanese fashion. Taut, gripping, original and suspenseful, but without delivering a complete feeling of real suspense, the book got me caring about Jif and Yuzuyu, with whom he abstains from sex - instead, he frequently changes her diaper. He feels like a kiddy voyeur, and can't wait for the day she's 18 and they can finally do "something real," but I kept wondering if he was going to cross the line. You'll have to read this book to find out.
Not unexpectedly, the sexually and socially pent-up Jif resorts to violence, buying a gun on his "lonely walk" and seeking revenge for the dead Charlie. This only leads to his further degradation and oncoming mental depravity, and there are long and involved sequences surrounding Charlie's funeral, with a lot of tie-ins and tie-ups explaining different portions of the book. It all finally comes together, and I was rewarded with a surprise ending which was not telegraphed in any way - things were not what I expected, not at all!
The story is actually quite consistent, and though it leaps back and forth a lot in time, the facts all check - with some repetition - maybe to keep the reader involved. Jif is simply a paunchy, nice but isolated and inelegant modern man, struggling over his ever-mounting guilt from being indirectly responsible for Charlie's death. Things bog down later in the book, during Jif's fantasies and hallucinations, and it's obvious he's starting to sink like a lost British ocean liner; but his deep love for Yuzuyu is the one thing keeping him going.
I highly recommend this book for a weekend's "lonely walk" of a scintillating and dynamic, albeit "unstuck in time," Japanese and British island road.
