Product Description An army of cats joins a crew of marooned pirates to save you from explosions and knife attacks and to stop Up from becoming Down. But before the cats, before the pirates, you are standing outside the metro in rush-hour Tokyo when the building across the street from you explodes. Seconds later, you're yanked off your feet by a salaryman who plans to use you to change the directions themselves. And you're not sure if you're hallucinating, but sometimes your feet are on the ceiling rather than the floor where they should be. Ancient texts, midnight visits from a girl with pink hair and red claws and all your worldly possessions shooting out into the street in a giant fireball eventually drive you to a temple on the Japanese coast where you hope Kannon, the goddess of mercy, can tell you which way is Up.
Customer Reviews: Crazy, addicting fun!March 15, 2010 H. Hennessy I have four kids and very little time to read, and even when I do have time I usually fall asleep. From the first page of You and The Pirates I was absolutely hooked. Every spare moment I had was devoted to discovering the next plot twist. I devoured this book despite my hesitation for fiction in general. Highly recommended.
Tokyo Cool, with a side order of catsOctober 7, 2009 S. White 1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is an assured and clever debut novel for Ms. Allen. The exotic setting (modern Tokyo), wry sense of humour, bizarre metaphysical mystery, and elements of Japanese pop culture add to the plot and lend the novel a charming, cool tone.
You and the Pirates follows the eponymous You as she (Allen left You's gender uncertain, but I chose to read the character as female) works her way through a series of exploding buildings, deranged salarymen, Japanese hipsters, guardian housecats, and stranded pirates. Her increasingly unhinged journeys are a delight, and reminded me more of Haruki Murakami (perhaps because of the setting and themes) than anything in the Canadian literary cannon. If not as meditative as Murakami's work in A Wild Sheep Chase, say, the characters' frequently deadpan responses to the wild plot shifts evoke something of the same worldview. The restless energy of the work, which reminded me a little of the caffeine-induced fugue portrayed in Wong Kar Wai's Chungking Express, marries the tone nicely, and helps to propel the reader through the story at a solid clip.
Allen takes great risks in content (grounding the book in a part of the world so alien from the everyday experience of her readership) and style (the book shifts mid-way from second-to-third person; the characters go by descriptions or nicknames instead of proper names) and ends up with something unlike anything I've read before. The author does a very nice job imbuing the characters with enough personality to make her naming scheme work, an experiment that could have ended very badly indeed (particularly given the number and range of characters and the complexity of the plot). The book is long on charm (the stop-motion trailer on youtube is itself a minor delight), and well worth a look for anyone who is searching for distinctive new voices (or tired of the tyranny of gravity).
Parenthetically, if this is indicative of the fare the Workhorsery, the publisher that apparently launched with this book, intends to back then it'll be an imprint that's a lot of fun to watch in future.
