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	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher

WHERE THE DEAD PAUSE AND THE JAPANESE SAY GOODBYE

Marie Mutsuko Mockett

A Journey

An intimate voyage into Japanese culture and spirituality, culminating in one of Japan’s most sacred places.

Marie Mutsuki Mockett’s family owns a Buddhist temple 25 miles from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. In March 2011, after the earthquake and tsunami, radiation levels prohibited the burial of her Japanese grandfather’s bones. At the same time, Mockett grieved for her American father, who had died unexpectedly. As Japan mourned thousands of people lost in the disaster, she wondered: how does one cope with overwhelming grief? Seeking consolation, Mockett is guided by a colorful cast of Zen priests and ordinary Japanese who perform rituals that disturb, haunt, and finally uplift her. From the ecstasy of a cherry blossom festival in the radiation zone to the ghosts inhabiting chopsticks, Mockett writes of both the earthly and the sublime with extraordinary sensitivity. Her unpretentious and engaging voice makes her the kind of companion a reader wants to stay with wherever she goes, even into the heart of grief itself. Marie Mutsuki Mockett’s novel Picking Bones from Ash was shortlisted for the 2010 Saroyan Prize and the Asian American Literary Awards for Fiction and was a finalist for the Paterson Prize. She lives in San Francisco.

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Book Published 2015-01-19 by W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. - New York (USA)

Comments

A beautiful tale that is part evocative travelogue and part lyrical meditation on grief, this soulful and haunting book made me cry in a way I like to cry when reading a good book. Where the Dead Pause, and the Japanese Say Goodbye will resonate with anyone who has lost a loved one, a homeland, or a home and hoped for healing on the other side.

What a remarkable and moving book about traveling from one land to another, and learning different ways of coming to terms with death amid life. Engrossing and powerful, it speaks volumes about the many ways people grieve and live.

Richly layered in culture and insight, Mockett takes us on a compelling and illuminating journey of the heart and soul.

A poignant spiritual journey through Japan… Touching on themes of modernity and tradition, Mockett takes part in various religious customs to come to terms with her grief and understand her mixed-cultural heritage.

Marie Mockett has taken the most spectacular catastrophe of our era and used it to teach us astonishing things about faith, perseverance, and the mysteries of the soul. Her journey through personal grief and the devastation of Japan after the 2011 tsunami and nuclear disaster brings us into a sacred space. With this book, Marie Mockett brought me into the high drama of the tsunami, through her most personal landscape, and into the awe of the eternal.

This book speaks to my heart. Grief is part of what it means to be human, and Marie Mutsuki Mockett's book models an approach to grief, an attitude of courage, curiosity, and inquiry that is our birthright, as humans, wherever we happen to be born. Read it. You will be uplifted.