MAYUMI AND THE SEA OF HAPPINESS
Book ID/图书代码： 02330014B70343
English Summary/英文概要： Books may be Mayumi Saito’s greatest love and her one source of true pleasure. Forty-one years old, disenchanted wife and dutiful mother, Mayumi’s work as a librarian on a small island off the coast of New England feeds her passion for reading and provides her with many occasions for wry observations on human nature, but it does little to remedy the mundanity of her days. That is, until the day she issues a library card to a shy seventeen-year-old boy and swiftly succumbs to a sexual obsession that subverts the way she sees the library, her family, the island she lives on, and ultimately herself.
Wary of the consequences of following through on her fantasies, Mayumi hesitates at first. But she cannot keep the young man from her thoughts. After a summer of overlong glances and nervous chitchat in the library, she finally accepts that their connection is undeniable. In a sprawling house emptied of its summer vacationers, their affair is consummated and soon consolidated thanks to an explosive charge of erotic energy. Mayumi’s life is radically enriched by the few hours each week that she shares with the young man, and as their bond grows stronger thanks not only to their physical closeness but also to their long talks about the books they both love, those hours spent apart seem to Mayumi increasingly bleak and intolerable. As her obsession worsens, in a frantic attempt to become closer to the young man, Mayumi nervously befriends another librarian patron, the young man’s mother. The two women forge a tenuous friendship that will prove vital to both in the most unexpected ways when catastrophe strikes.
Exquisitely written, Mayumi and the Sea of Happiness is part wry confession, part serious meditation. At its most anxious, it’s a book about time, at its most ecstatic, it’s a deeply human story about pleasure.
Chinese Summary/中文概要： 书籍可能是齐藤真由美最喜爱的事物，也是她唯一真正快乐的来源。作为一名已经41岁，早已魅力不再的称职妈妈，真由美在新英格兰的一座小岛上担任图书馆管理员。这份工作满足了她对于阅读的热情，也让她有更多的机会去尽情地观摩人性，即便如此，这份工作却无法将她从尘世中解脱出来。直到有一天，她为一名害羞的十七岁少年办理了一张图书馆卡，并迅速地屈服于一场改变她看待周遭世界的性诱惑之下，从此颠覆了她对图书馆、家庭、寓居的小岛，以及她自身的认知。最初，真由美犹豫不决，她担心自己的幻想会带来不好的结果。但少年却在她的脑海中挥之不去。经过一个夏天的眼神交汇和紧张的漫谈，真由美也最终接受了现实：两人之间的火花毋庸置疑。在一处空出的夏日别墅里，俩人的关系最终确定，也因为充满爆发力的冲动释放而获得加固。每周和少年的几小时相聚，让真由美的生活产生了巨大的充实感，随着两人间情感联系的日渐增强，当然不仅仅是身体上的亲近，更重要的是他们对爱书进行的长时间探讨，真由美发现分离的时光变得愈发荒凉和难以忍受。真由美对少年的迷恋日渐加深，她疯狂的想要更加接近少年，同时她也在紧张地亲近和帮助另一位图书馆的资助者——少年的母亲。两个女人之间形成了一种微妙的友谊，当‘灾难’最终降临时，这一友谊将会以一种最出人意料的方式，变得至关重要。《真由美和她的欢乐海洋》用细腻笔触娓娓道来，半是苦涩的忏悔，半是认真的沉思。全书中最大的焦灼，是关于时间；而最极致喜悦的则在于这一故事最深处关于人性的愉悦。(DC)
Awards/获奖情况：MAYUMI AND THE SEA OF HAPPINESS has been named one of 23 fiction books you’ll want to read -- and share -- this summer. http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-ca-jc-summer-books-guide-fiction-html-20150531-htmlstory.html
"Mayumi’s trespasses and thrills are so deeply imagined that I lived her affair with her, cheering her even as I knew I would drown with her in her ecstasy. This book’s fierce physicality glitters beneath the surface of every heady sentence.”—Susanna Daniel, author of Stilsville and Sea Creatures
“Jennifer Tseng delivers an elegant exploration of passion and its consequences while casting her observant eye on motherhood, memory, exile, and female friendship. Carnal, witty, and slyly crafted, Mayumi and the Sea of Happiness is a sizzling fuse of a novel, with an explosion bigger and better than anything you can imagine.”—Sara Levine, author of Treasure Island!!!
“The love scenes don’t lack for erotic description and detail, and Mayumi’s obsessive admiration for the young man swings between coolly perceptive and discomfitingly overheated. But the precision and poetry of Tseng’s writing keep the book from meandering too far in the direction [of pure romance]...Tseng explores time and place, isolation and connection, and veers more toward the lyrical than the lurid.”—Kirkus Reviews
About the Author/作者介绍： 珍妮弗•曾从休斯顿大学取得小说艺术硕士学位，从加州大学洛杉矶分校获取美国亚裔研究硕士学位，并曾两次成为Provincetown艺术作品中心小说研究员。她的诗歌作品曾赢得亚裔美国作家工作室的全国诗歌手稿奖，PEN American Center Open Book 奖，以及马利克出版诗歌奖。她的小说作品曾获Glimmer Train短篇小说奖新人奖。目前，作者在玛莎葡萄园的West Tisbury图书馆担任管理员。Jennifer Tseng earned an MFA in fiction from the University of Houston, an MA in Asian American Studies from UCLA and was twice a fiction Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. Her poetry has won the Asian American Writers’ Workshop’s National Poetry Manuscript Competition, a PEN American Center Open Book Award, and the Marick Press Poetry Prize. Her fiction has won the Glimmer Train Short Story Award for New Writers. The author is a librarian at the West Tisbury Library on Martha’s Vineyard.
Format:
Rights Status/版权销售情况：Simplified Chinese/简体中文：AVAILABLE
Complex/Traditional Chinese/繁体中文：AVAILABLE
Sales in other countries/其他国家销售情况：Edizioni E/O (Italy-via Publisher)
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