Books

The Ghosts of Nagasaki

  • May 09, 2021
  • Daniel Clausen
  • 296 responses.

The Ghosts of Nagasaki One night a foreign business analyst in Tokyo sits down in his spacious high rise apartment and begins typing something The words pour out and exhaust him He soon realizes that the words appearing on

  • Title: The Ghosts of Nagasaki
  • Author: Daniel Clausen
  • ISBN: 9781478314479
  • Page: 459
  • Format: Paperback

    • One night a foreign business analyst in Tokyo sits down in his spacious high rise apartment and begins typing something The words pour out and exhaust him He soon realizes that the words appearing on his laptop are memories of his first days in Nagasaki four years ago Nagasaki was a place full of spirits, a garrulous Welsh roommate, and a lingering mystery Somehow he mOne night a foreign business analyst in Tokyo sits down in his spacious high rise apartment and begins typing something The words pour out and exhaust him He soon realizes that the words appearing on his laptop are memories of his first days in Nagasaki four years ago Nagasaki was a place full of spirits, a garrulous Welsh roommate, and a lingering mystery Somehow he must finish the story of four years ago a story that involves a young Japanese girl, the ghost of a dead Japanese writer, and a mysterious island He must solve this mystery while maneuvering the hazards of middle management, a cruel Japanese samurai, and his own knowledge that if he doesn t solve this mystery soon his heart will transform into a ball of steel, crushing his soul forever Though he wants to give up his writing, though he wants to let the past rest, within his compulsive writing lies the key to his salvation.

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    The Ghosts of Nagasaki

    About "Daniel Clausen"

    1. Daniel Clausen

      Daniel has wanted to be a writer ever since he was in elementary school.He has published stories and articles in such magazines as Slipstream, Black Petals, Spindrift, Zygote in my Coffee, and Leading Edge Science Fiction and many others He has written six books The Sage and the Scarecrow a novel , the Lexical Funk a short story collection , Reejecttion short story essay collection , ReejecttIIon A Number Two, short story essay collection , Something to Stem the Diminishing short story essay collection , and The Ghosts of Nagasaki a novel.

    296 Comments

    1. Sorry this review is long overdue, and probably still won t be what the book deserves.This book deserves your time and your full attention You will feel the tug of invitation to get lost in it and to maybe not even question where you re being taken, although you will never be too sure where you re being taken And for sure you ll wonder about your tour guide, our protagonist But you ll hope that he figures himself out and finds what he needs So, you like to write No, I say honestly I desperately [...]

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    2. Wanted Reviewers of Magic Realism and Literary FictionAre you looking for a book that integrates overweight dragons, dead authors, and samurais Are you looking for something unique, romantic, and challenging Then, you should message me on and convince me to give you a reviewer s copy You can check out an excerpt from the book right here author_blog

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    3. That s when the girl stands up and says, I ve seen the ghosts I see the ghost of my uncle all the time In fact, he s standing right over there I carry him with me wherever I go And she points.The class goes silent Despite all outward appearances, it s not a silence born of surprise.In this haunted country, ghosts are everywhere, like cherry blossoms and Starbucks.The American narrator of this book spends much of his time hanging out in Japanese pubs with his expat pals He is a business analyst O [...]

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    4. Brilliant What a great, surprising read Clausen is another self published author who makes me proud to be a self published author I would put The Ghosts of Nagasaki up on the shelf next to any renowned modern literary work Well, except for that damned print on demand glossy cover I despise the aesthetic of the default glossy cover But everything between the pages, ah, that s another story Literally.The ghosts of the The Ghosts of Nagasaki are both memories and than memories Are they literal gho [...]

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    5. A young American financial analyst returns to his Tokyo apartment one evening and begins, for no obvious reason, to write He starts with his arrival in Japan, four years earlier, at the age of 22, to work as an English teacher in Nagasaki We re back in a noisy group of heavy drinking young expat teachers, and our narrator is as smashed as the rest of them But there is something a little reflective about him As he recounts his life as it was in Nagasaki, we learn that he had a childhood and yout [...]

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    6. This wonderful novel swept me up in a godlike fist and deposited me in a Japan that was somehow familiar to me, despite my never having been to Japan, and discomfortingly alien at the same time I then found my hand being taken by a kabuki cast of ghosts, dragons and metaphors made flesh and led through a series of worlds some allegorical, some as brutally physical as dirt, but all with a drunken, hallucinatory sense of the familiar The journey managed to be both deeply disturbing and somehow com [...]

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    7. I was sent a free copy of this book in return for a review and now I feel terrible because it s made me realise what a terrible reviewer I am For starters I m going to fall into that annoying camp of people who doesn t know how to review this book because the dreamy, nonlinear structure and historical backdrop have made it virtually impossible for a joker like me to summarise so I m going to skip that part I ve just read other reviews hoping they d give me something to go off, but most of them s [...]

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    8. Wow What a book Need to catch my breath while I figure out a review for this so I m gonna ramble for a bit.Have you ever seen a David Lynch movie The movie moves along slowly for a bit, nice and easy to watch, suddenly there is this shift in reality and everything changes, nothing makes sense but it is mesmerising to watch whilst your brain works overtime piecing together what is happening This book is just like a David Lynch movie It moves along slowly, partying, drinking loads, some fantastic [...]

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    9. I have always believed that the goodness of life was somewhere beyond my grasp, that the shadow of failure was hanging over me Every obstacle seemed like a slope that could lead me back to where I came from a nice shiny new car borrowed for a while and a bit of sunshine, one kid on top of you, the other shoving dirt in your mouth What a nerve wracking thing it is to be given hope What a beautiful, thought provoking, profoundly surprising and courageous book I was approached by the author with an [...]

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    10. Imagine if you will, that instead of Alice, Holden Caulfield went through the looking glass seeking not his missing kitten but his missing heart Imagine further that this entire episode of madness magic were to be orchestrated by David Lynch This would then be something akin to The Ghosts of Nagasaki.It is lovely and disorienting and full of beautiful, dream like prose.

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    11. The Ghosts of Nagasaki is of those ones that lingers Giving a breakdown of theme, plot or character seems to waste time somehow, so I won t I don t want to figure this novel out, just leave it to live in the fragment of time in which I read it, compartmentalize it away into its own drawer and lock it ready as a challenge to my unconscious mind to sort out It s not sparing with its heaviness or dismissive of its playfulness Deadness.The ghostly figures that populate the novel care little for thei [...]

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    12. 3.5 StarsAs many reviewers have mentioned, this is a difficult book to review I can honestly say I ve never read anything like it I don t usually feel out of my depths with books, but I was with this one, practically from the first page, and I never really felt that I found my footing with it You will never ever ever predict what is going to happen in this story not in a huge plot twist kind of way, like The Sixth Sense, like you just couldn t conceive of the interesting sights you might come a [...]

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    13. This is a difficult book to review for me It s completely different to anything I have ever read before, and has stayed with me for days since finishing.First of all, I will say that I initially struggled with this book Not through any fault of either the author or the content, I must add My fault entirely from jumping straight into reading this fresh from finishing another Japanese based novel my first Murakami without giving time for the dust to settle.In saying that, this is a challenging rea [...]

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    14. A beautiful, meandering surrealist memoir of sorts that to me read in a Murakami esque dislocated style The narrative branches and sprawls out epically, echoing its narrative through history and fantasy Unfortunately I don t find myself with to say than has already been said, having read the far incisive reviews of this work that are available some of my favourites you can check out below RebeccaJasonHarryLibbyMike But maybe that s better, because I can guarantee you ve read this far so you kn [...]

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    15. I think I ve just found my new favourite author At one point in Ghosts of Nagasaki, the protagonist is asked So, you like to write To which he replies, No, I desperately want to quit, but I can t I have a feeling the author may have been talking about himself there, because this book reeks of an idea that was germinated and accumulated in a prose confused head until it eventually forced the writer to put pen to paper Or finger to key And, for me, that s the secret of a great writer they don t ac [...]

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    16. I find that some books are eminently readable when you let them wash over you and don t worry about figuring it out this is a story of self discovery the narrator has gotten lost in memories of foster homes childhood nightmares, humiliation, and rebellion and the ghosts that overwhelm him in Japan, where he s gone to get away from everything some of the ghosts are his own and some seem to come from Japan s history and transformations shusaku endou s novel silence comes to play a than minor rol [...]

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    17. What a magical, mystical journey this book takes the reader on As others have said, this book s not for everyone and is not a light, easy read I at first thought it wasn t a very long book but it ended up taking me longer than usual to read because I had to stop, think, look back, read a paragraph or two again to appreciate what it was saying Daniel Clausen was kind enough to send me a copy of his book for a review after reading the books I had listed on my reading list on as he thought his book [...]

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    18. I d hesitate to recommend this to everyone though, because it s just on that edge of surrealism that will not appeal to everyone However, I think if anyone enjoys Haruki Murakami, they re going to enjoy this book I think my appreciation was heightened because I ve read both Silence and recently, Five by Endo by Sh saku End While he made references to Silence and the Christian martyrs in Nagasaki, Endo s Silence paints such a strong picture of the torture of Portuguese missionaries by the Japane [...]

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    19. Wow There were moments in this book where I was swept away into an entirely new reality Few of those moments were with the ghosts or the experimental portions of the book I liked those moments, appreciated the difficulty and the skill it took to write them, but what really grabbed me was the main character struggling with the death of his foster mother and with finding his own place in the world Clausen wrote those moments to such perfection that it was truly touching to read.I love a book that [...]

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    20. Originally posted on my blog Guiltless ReadingI admit it, I apostasized the conventional novel.My two cents This is one difficult book to review I have been sitting on this letting my thoughts percolate because it isn t a conventional read, and so my review isn t going to be conventional either.When I first saw the title, I thought it could be anything from historical fiction hey, it s set in Japan , to scary mystery Japanese ghosts The Ring I didn t know what I was expecting, really, and when I [...]

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    21. The Ghosts of Nagasaki turned out to be a completely different story than the one I was expecting and nothing makes me happier in a book than being pleasantly surprised and taken completely off guard.The story itself is symbol and metaphor heavy to the point that, from time to time, the metaphor is much a concrete presence than the real and present action This book doesn t play subtly until about ten pages from the end, when it suddenly smacks you over the head with everything you overlooked an [...]

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    22. This was pretty frustrating to read at first I had this book on the back burner for the longest time, but finally got the time to read it I ll admit, for the first half of the book, I was pretty discouraged There was a whole lot about the character that was too repetitive aspects of his personality would surface with either no or way too much context the story itself seemed locked into a repetitive quality that tried way too hard to establish the banal nature of office work English teaching bar [...]

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    23. Like I ve said many times before, this book was received as a courtesy from the author Despite that endlessly kind consideration, I will give it candid feedback below.On first glance it s rather hard to know what exactly to expect from Ghosts Supernatural thriller Bildungsroman Simple personal drama Thinly veiled autobio Stylistically it s a stream of consciousness put to paper, almost a Blair Witch of the printed page The narrative bounces effortlessly from point to point, backwards and forward [...]

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    24. I received a copy of this book for my honest review The Ghosts of Nagasaki by Daniel Clausen was a difficult book to read It took me a long time to get into this book and try to sort out the characters and the ghosts Reading this book took me the longest time to read and get through It seemed to me that the unnamed protagonist of this story was an orphan, never knowing his parents He s been in trouble most of his young life until a foster family took him in He became friendly with his foster mom [...]

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    25. I received a free copy of this book from the author in the hopes that I would write an honest review.When I began reading the book I was slightly confused I couldn t tell if the main character was crazy, drunk or just writing whatever popped out of his brain It didn t take to long to realize the extend of the character s madness and how much I truly began to care about the characters I found this book to be very intense and yet very enjoyable I would read it for hours and not want to put it down [...]

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    26. The Ghosts of Nagasaki starts off straightforward enough a foreign business analyst for an international investment firm feels inexplicably compelled to type out whatever he is thinking about What seems at first to be a memoir of loss, regret, and drunken debauchery though, ends up unfolding in a rather unorthodox manner As it turns out, this analyst has a bit of a troubled past, and a difficult time addressing it to boot Despite acknowledging his dissatisfaction with work, family, and socializa [...]

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    27. I will not rate a sample, but I will say that I loved this excerpt Clausen s last book, Lexical Funk was an outstanding collection of short stories my review here , and I am absolutely psyched for this to come out in full It s odd and dreamlike yet with a grounded sense of character The Welsh roommate was both utterly real and utterly hilarious The main character was a bit of a mystery from the get go, but I expect his inner workings and issues will be revealed The setting is Japan, and Clausen [...]

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    28. Reviews aren t done in a vacuum This is especially true when a book has been out for a while and has been reviewed for a while Most of the reviewers make great hay of the surrealism, of the book, its conceit of a person s personal spirits both existing and being visible by others who, likewise, have their own spirits Or personal demons Or, baggage, as many of the knowledgeable characters point out to the main character, a former English teacher turned businessman This making of hay the author, [...]

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    29. This is a complex read Time shifts Half the time you re not sure whether the characters are real people or exist only in the imagination of the protagonist References to various books and authors are strewn all over the prose I liked that It was like running into someone familiar in a busy crowd I m rather fond of intertextuality However, the hook is the wonderful prose For me that was the biggest strength of the novel and the rating is based solely on that The phrase making is beautiful and ins [...]

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    30. When I didn t win this book through a giveaway, the author was kind enough to offer to send a copy my way, anyhow I know Cool, huh He said that, judging by the other books on my shelf, his book would be a good match for my usual eclectic reading habits.Not hardly Of all the bazillions of books I ve read in my life, I don t believe this book matches a single one of them Nope It belongs on a shelf all by itself a shelf I m gonna call mind bending I think the absolutely perfect matches it to a t wa [...]

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