The Electrical Field Paperback by Kerri Sakamoto

Product Details

• Publisher: Vintage Canada (2018-02-06)
• Language: English
• Paperback: 272 pages
• ISBN-13: 9780735274723
• Item Weight: 199.58 grams
• Dimensions: 20.57 x 13.46 x 1.52 cm

In her memorable first novel, first published twenty years ago, Kerri Sakamoto takes a deeply shattering look at one of the darker eras in Canadian history.


     Set in a small Ontario town in the 1970s, the novel opens with the discovery of the beautiful Chisako and her lover dead in a park. In the ensuing investigation, suspicion immediately falls on Chisako's husband, Yano, who abruptly takes their two children and moves away, leaving the community afraid for the children's fate. At the same time, the town's inhabitants are forced to confront the dark shadow of their past, and its aftermath on the citizens of the community.
     It is Chisako's neighbour, Miss Saito, who tells the story. Living on a farmhouse overlooking a field of electric towers, Miss Saito lives mostly alone, duty-bound to care for her invalid father and only encountering her sullen younger brother for supper. Her own memory a fractured collage of past and present, Miss Saito recounts her observations--of Chisako and the bruises that were and weren't there, of the abuse Miss Saito herself faced in her younger years at the hands of her father, and of the destruction wreaked by the aftermath of the Japanese internment on mind and spirit, culture and pride of the Japanese-Canadian citizen.
    What starts as a murder mystery unravels into a melancholic rumination on pain and survival in a hostile world. The Electrical Field crackles with the same intense electricity as the towers that fill it.

About the Author

 KERRI SAKAMOTO was born in Toronto in 1959, the younger of two sisters. She has written scripts for independent films as well as writing extensively on visual art. In 1998 her first novel, The Electrical Field, was a finalist for a slew of awards -- the Governor General's Award, the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize and the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award -- and won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book and the Canada-Japan Literary Award. Sakamoto also wrote One Hundred Million Hearts, published in 2004, and her third novel, Floating City, in 2018.