SET MY HEART ON FIRE

An intimate, candid portrait of a 20-something woman navigating the tumultuous world of music, partying, and relationships in 1970s Japan, originally published in Japanese in 1996.

In Suzuki’s first work to be published in English, Izumi—whose name suggests a stand-in for the author herself—is restless in relationships. She takes up with men for a few months, seeking validation or an end to her ennui, but quickly gets bored. Seemingly at random, she steals the guitarist boyfriend of one of her friends, a music journalist named Etsuko, but the friendship outlasts the relationship. Izumi reflects on the rock music of the era and pines for Joel, the bassist of a legendary band called Green Glass. She even manages to meet up with Joel, though their attempt at a relationship is, for reasons not entirely clear, never fully realized. Fatefully, Izumi is drawn to Jun, a man so complicated and intriguing that she’s ensnared in his deluded—and at times dangerous—ideas of desire and commitment; she laments that Jun “completely ignored [her] wishes and well-being. He didn’t think [they] were different people with different feelings in the first place.” Izumi claims she has no character: “I’m just not a protagonist,” she says. “…I’m like water. I flow easily into any vessel and take its shape.” And again: “Sometimes I even wished I were more flat and frictionless.” At times, these proclamations can feel awkwardly self-aware; her endless fixation on men becomes tedious and perilous.

Vivid and unflinching, if at times somewhat derivative.