Strange, but as a story goes McInerney's insight into one young white American's alienation in Japan should have been a blinder, a corker...but it missed somehwat and became nothing more than jumped-up sci-fi in the East. None-the-less, I am slightly baffled that no other reviewer has seen fit to note one of the most breathtaking and surprising finales in modern writing. So much so, it saves the book from the chop.