Five Decembers

James Kestrel, 2021 Five Decembers Dust jacket and flaps Click on images to enlarge Yosha Bunko scans

Susanna Jones 2003

Water Lily

English editions

Susanna Jones
Water Lily
London: Picador/Pan Macmillan, 2003 (hardcover)
London: Picador, 2003 (paper cover)
Sydney: Picador, 2003 (paper cover)
294 pages
New York: Mysterious Press, 2003

Japanese translation

53 short chapters are divided between 3 parts.

You can count them -- 5 Decembers

Top  

Story

Runa, a young Japanese high school teacher, has an affair with one of her students, and flees to Shanghai on her sister's passport. Ralph, a British man running from his own troubled past, boards the same ferry, his mind set on not returning to England alone.

To be continued.

Top  

Susanna Jones

Susanna Jones went on to write to more more novels after The Earthquake Bird (2001) and Water Lily (2003) -- The Missing Persons Guide to Love (2007) and When Nights Were Cold: A literary mystery (2012).

The Earthquake Bird, also published by Picador in both hardback and paper cover editions, features Lucy Fly, a British woman who has been in Japan for 10 years and works as a translator, her Japanese lover Teiji, and her best Lily Bridges, who also becomes involved with Teiji. One day, Lily goes missing, a body found in Tokyo Bay is taken to be hers, and Lucy becomes an object of police investigation. See The Earthquake Bird for a review.

Susanna Jones was a university fiction tutor from 2003 to 2018. In 2019, she began teaching and tutoring creative writing in classes and workshops, and mentoring privately, in Brighton, where she lives, and on-line. She promotes her on-line offerings at PebbleBeachWriting, and on X (Twitter) and other social media.