Rider

Mai Asahikawa, the protagonist of this oddly affecting first novel, rides Tokyo's subway trains. She rides the rails from six in the morning to past midnight, breaking only for quick noodle-shop meals on the larger platforms. Sitting on the molded-plastic chairs, she lets her observant eye rove over the salacious billboard advertisements, the subtle merits and detractions of each line, and the behavior of others, often giving subtle attention to the differences between women and men. ""There is not a rider who is not a voyeur of sorts,"" she notes. ""Yet, if I were to suggest to that woman sitting two seats away that she was a voyeur, she would certainly insist that she was just a casual glancer, and who am I to be looking at her anyhow?"" There is nothing wrong with Mai--not fundamentally, anyway. She's just a born outsider, an introvert with a murky past and an American father, which officially excludes her from Japanese citizenship. It is this lack of ""cultural blood"" that finally unhinges her marriage. Slowly, through little admissions and anecdotes, we learn that Mai has been living this way for a year, trying to assimilate her divorce and the suicide of her closest friend. The narrative has a pleasing caliper shape: the beginning is detailed and reflective, while the novel's final 40 pages are hell-bent for leather. In no time, Mai becomes the top suspect in a murder investigation, which is interrupted by a massive earthquake. This disaster allows Mai to put her extreme knowledge of the subway system to heroic use. Wolbers's writing betrays a patience beyond her experience; she feels no compulsion to push the pace or collect all the story's strands--which doesn't always work out to the narrative's advantage. The inclusion in the text of indistinct drawings sketched by Mai, for instance, never builds into anything more than a distraction. (Nov.)