The Boy in the Earth

February 27, 2017
The cynical and disengaged unnamed narrator of this enigmatic novel from Nakamura (The Gun) has quit his sales job at a company that produces educational materials and now works as a taxi driver in Tokyo. For no obvious reason, he picks a fight with a group of motorcyclists and, predictably, ends up badly beaten. He gives Sayuko, a former work colleague and the one person he regularly interacts with, no chance to express sympathy; they go to bed, but she shows no emotion during intercourse. Later, the narrator gets a jolt from news of the parents who abandoned him 20 years earlier: his mother has died, but his father is still alive. He can’t help wondering whether he could have led a different life if he had been given reason to believe that his parents actually hoped he would grow up to be a good person. Bit by bit, Nakamura fills in some of the details of his lead’s backstory, making a character who will initially seem alien to most readers less so. The action builds to a devastating conclusion that explains the title.

A taxi driver's ruminations comprise the majority of this dark glimpse of how childhood secrets reverberate in the present. Narrator Brian Nishii lends a somber voice to an unnamed main character who drives a taxi in Tokyo. Nishii handles both male and female characters with dramatic intensity to match their experiences on the fringes of society. The listener becomes submerged in a day-to-day existence dogged by the threat of poverty and the disappointments of the past. Would it be better if life ended? Nishii makes the existential angst palpable in his steady delivery of lengthy sentences. His correct pronunciation of Japanese words and names makes for a seamless listening experience. M.R. � AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine