Half-world

Masako Togawa's 1963 novel The Lady Killer is published in a new edition by Pushkin Vertigo. I first read it in Penguin paperback in 1994. The English translation is by Simon Grove. It's one of those novels where every word is in the right place. The reveals are especially good. The author drops visual clues with Hitchockian relish. The reader sees what's coming, and then something different comes along.

The Lady Killer was Togawa's second novel. Wikipedia describes the author as a "Chanson singer/songwriter, actress, feminist, novelist, LGBTQQIAP community icon, former night club owner, metropolitan city planning panelist, music educator." In 1967 she turned her sister’s coffee shop into a celebrity hangout and lesbian nightclub known as "Blue Room".