Ghost of a Smile: Stories - Hardcover

Author Deborah Boehm turns modern Tokyo into a shadow world where life and death are simply matters of perspective, and where love, longing and sexual desire last beyond the grave. In this supernaturally enhanced city, the ordinary boundaries of identity--country, gender, even whether one is human or a spirit--are blurred. Ghosts can seduce, trick and even love mortals, and so the familiar problems related to dating and falling in love may be compounded by the discovery that a partner isn't human at all.

The characters are a vibrant and unique mix. In "The Snake Spell," a shy and nearsighted librarian attends a country festival and is chosen as the winner of a spell that makes her suddenly irresistible to men. In "The Fire Down Below," a spoiled, rich girl collects signed and graphic confessions from her many lovers in an effort to foil her father's plans for an arranged marriage, only one day to fall in love, hard, with a fiercely celibate monk. In "Naked in the Moonlight," the last remaining itinerant goldfish-peddler in Tokyo spends his days alone until an act of kindness toward a small animal changes the course of his life. "The Beast in the Mirror" features a Hawaiian sumo rikishi who must wrestle with his own darker side, since he has begun to wake up in back alleyways with a strange taste in his mouth and blood on his hands.

Other creatures met along the way include egg-faced monsters, skeleton wives, fox-women, demon badger-dogs, and nymphomaniacal goddesses. Throughout, Boehm's humorous take on the world of the spirits delights, while her use of language dazzles.

Deborah Boehm creates here a world so rich and strange that readers may be tempted to jump on the next plane to Japan. But be forewarned: her world is not necessarily accessible by any known means of travel. To get an idea of the atmosphere that pervades the stories, imagine a collaboration by Lorrie Moore and Edward Gorey, or the Brothers Grimm and Dave Barry.