Clean and bright, apparently unread. When Jane Takaji-Little finally lands a job - producing a Japanese television show sponsored by BEEF-EX, an organisation promoting US meat export - she takes her video crew on the road in search of all-American wives, cooking all-American meat A starving artist, born in Minnesota and relocated (via Tokyo) to New York's Lower East Side, Jane has never considered the kitchen a career move She hardly expects this cross-country assignment to raise cross-cultural questions - not just about her life, but also about sex, love and fertility in our time. Akkiko Ueno, a Tokyo housewife, diligently prepares the Meat of the Week from the recent episode of My American Wife!. A former comic-book illustrator, Akiko is now married to a "salaryman", the advertising agency rep for BEEF-EX. At his orders she fills out a weekly questionnaire, rating each show on Authenticity, Wholesomeness and Deliciousness of Meat. But Akiko is learning something more than just recipes from Jane's programmes, and slowly, before she realizes it, her life begins to change. One parallel year in the lives of two women at opposite ends of the earth, brought together by a strange, almost surreal convergence of global politics, meat, TV and personal crisis. From small-town America to the claustrophobia of the Japanese corporate lifestyle, MY YEAR OF MEAT is an extraordinary novel of home-grown heartbreak and humour.

Fiction