What's Left of Me Is Yours

February 1, 2020
In Japan, a daughter explores the crime of passion that took her mother's life. Sumiko was just 7 when her mother died and her father moved away; she was raised by her grandfather, who has always maintained that her mother was killed in a car accident. Twenty years later, she answers a phone call meant for him from a prison administrator with information about inmate Kaitarō Nakamura; when the caller realizes whom she is speaking with, she hangs up. With just this detail, Sumiko begins an obsessive quest. She turns up an article headlined "WAKARESASEYA AGENT GOES TOO FAR?" from which she learns that Kaitarō Nakamura was an agent in the "marriage breakup" industry. He was hired by her father to seduce her mother in order to provide grounds for divorce. Nakamura claims that he and her mother had fallen in love and were about to start a new life together. When Sumiko visits Nakamura's defense attorney, the woman hands over all her files and videotaped interviews with her client. Weaving through the story of Sumiko's search and her recollections of her childhood is the story of her mother and her lover, from the moment he pretended to meet her accidentally at the market and moving inexorably to the murder scene. Scott is a Singaporean British writer born and raised in Southeast Asia; her debut is inspired by a 2010 case in Tokyo and based on years of research. The book proceeds slowly, lingering on enjoyable details of Japanese landscape and food but perhaps not adding enough new information to maintain the level of interest set by the sensational details in the first pages. An unusual and stylish story of love and murder--less a mystery than a study of emotions and cultural mores.

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February 17, 2020
In Scott’s intense debut, a young woman explores the Japanese legal system and its relationship to the country’s divorce industry. Twenty-seven-year-old Sumiko Sarashima, a newly licensed attorney, seeks to discover the truth behind her mother’s murder in 1994 when Sumiko was seven. Rina Sato’s murderer, Kaitaro Nakamura, who once worked to seduce his clients’ spouses as evidential grounds for divorce, is now serving a 20-year sentence. What’s not clear to Sumiko is why Kaitaro murdered her mother. Scott rolls out the rest of the story adroitly, scrupulously reconstructing Sumiko’s parents’ past through case files and videotapes. Rina’s and Kaitaro’s passionate relationship unfolds in juxtaposed stories covering numerous locations—Tokyo, Sapporo, Shimoda, courtrooms and prison. The novel becomes exhilarating as Sumiko narrows her pursuit for the truth, interspersed with wistful chapters recounting Sumiko’s poignant memories of having two parents before she was adopted by her maternal grandfather. As Sumiko works to resolve the mystery of her mother’s murder, sifting through the facts brings her closer to understanding the blurred line that exists between love and hate. Byzantine subplots, distinctive characters, and atmospheric settings will leave readers spellbound.

March 1, 2020
A young photographer falls in love with a detective in Tokyo in the early 1990s in Scott's moody, leisurely paced debut. Rina, unhappily married to Sato and the mother of young daughter Sumiko, falls for Kaitaro. She doesn't know that Kaitoro works in the marriage breakup trade, and was hired by Sato to seduce her, so that Sato can divorce her for adultery. But then Kaitoro falls for Rina as well. And then, just as they are about to move in together, he murders her. Decades later, Sumiko, who has just passed the exam to become a lawyer, goes back to investigate this mystery, and uncovers layer after layer of complexity. Alternating primarily between Rina and Sumiko's points of view, Scott poignantly evokes both a mother trapped by the choices made for her and a daughter learning to deal with her own precarious freedom. She clearly defines the unfortunate effects of the traditional Japanese legal system on women, and with carefully accumulated details describes a Japan both physically and psychologically teetering on the edge of change.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)