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Ervin continuedfrom previous page serving green tea. That volume, like Berserk's "Giant Robots," provides a context that admirers of The Wind-Op Bird Chronicle (1995) or Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, of which there will be many, will find fascinating. collection may be a bit like asking Asimo and Aibo to mate, the discord actively contributes to the lovely ungainliness of Murakami's machine. Taken separately , most of these stories are capable of astounding , delighting, and shocking the reader, sometimes machine that, were it built by lesser hands— and with an initial printing of 75,000 copies loosened on the world—could end up terrorizing the populace. "Andrew Ervin " is a wholly owned subsidiary of While employing two different translators for a all at once. Together, they form a strangely beautiful Andrew Ervin. This Lady's for Burning Paul D'Agostino Crossfire Miyuki Miyabe Translated by Deborah Stuhr Iwabuchi and Anna Husson Isozaki Kodansha International http://www.kodansha-intl.com 408 pages; cloth, $24.95 Suppose a young man's relationship with his apartment forces him to drink. Suppose, for example, that when said young man returns to his apartment after an arguably long day of work or play, he takes a look around his abode, frowns, thinks how nice it would be to put things in order, clean them, rid the environment of that certain odor of neglect, and, as a result, be the tenant ofa dwelling that-might not be so terribly embarrassing for visitors to behold. Suppose, however, that as these thoughts cross the young man's mind, there is a parallel, and perhaps mildly more despairing, thought that crosses his mind as well: "It is going to take a lot ofwork, concentration, patience, energy, sweat, blood, tears, and aspirin to tame this behemoth mess." Logically, this latter-described part of the young man's parallel thought processes would bear sufficient weight to become the governing sentiment behind his ensuing action. Suppose, then, that the young man's reactions to these circumstances were to turn around, leave his apartment, exit the building, walk across town to his preferred watering hole, and commence the undeniably human undertaking of drinking-to-forget. Suppose this goes on day after day, week after week, until at some point the young man either gets his act together and cleans things up, dies from liver failure, or decides that arson really is not such a bad idea after all. For some time now, this hypothetical relationship has been, for me, a woeful reality. It has not been a filthy apartment, however, that has driven me to take more nighttime walks, drink more pints ofStella, and play more games of pool than I ever have in the turn of two weeks. Rather, the bane of my existence upon coming home, and thus the driving force behind my newfound near-delinquency, has been Miyuki Miyabe's Crossfire. I am rarely one to shy away from putting myself to task, especially when it comes to something as simple and enjoyable as reading a novel, but this book is a bigger blowfest than a category five hurricane named Fellatio could ever deliver. No offense to hurricanes, of course. After all, natural disasters are relatively unpreventable. Publishing disasters are the exact opposite. This book is a bigger blowfest than a categoryfive hurricane named Fellatio could ever deliver. I did not avoid Crossfire like the plague. I dodged it like somebody throwing knives at my face. Like lepers bearing mistletoe. Like lovers with poison sumac. Like pseudointellectual conversations about Dan Brown's "opus merdae." And for quite a while my evasive practice proved effective. After beginning to read the book and being thoroughly disappointed within the first five pages, then frustrated within the next five, then enraged before reaching page twenty, I knew that Crossfire and I were going to have a difficult and unproductive rapport. Before long, I began the practice of glancing at it, leaving my apartment, going drinking and playing pool, then returning home with just enough alcohol flowing through my bloodstream to enable me to readten orfifteen pages without wishing that spontaneous combustion would rid the world of either the book or myself. I trudged...

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