If You Follow Me: A Novel

“I love, love, love If You Follow Me. It’s
fearlessly honest, occasionally heartbreaking, and extremely funny, and I can’t
recommend it highly enough.” — Curtis Sittenfeld, New York Times bestselling
author of Prep and American Wife

In Malena Watrous' beautifully
wrought and deftly written debut novel, we meet Marina, a young woman who has
come to the small, rural Japanese town of Shika to teach English for a year. For
her, Shika is more than just her home as a “temporary person.” It’s also an
attempt to escape the reality that has followed her since her father committed
suicide only a year earlier.

Marina is a big city girl is in a
small town filled with off-beat characters, including an ambitious town
matchmaker, a dentist looking for free English lessons, a high school student who
idolizes Western rap artists, and finally Marina’s America-obsessed supervisor,
Hiro, a town leader whose friendship teaches her more than she ever expected.

If You Follow Me is
at once a fish-out-of-water tale, a dark comedy of manners, and a strange kind
of love story that explores the tension of being the outsider in an intimate
community and the joy in finding that human nature is the same everywhere.

Hoping to outpace her grief in the wake of her father's suicide, Marina has come to the small, rural Japanese town of Shika to teach English for a year. But in Japan, as she soon discovers, you can never really throw away your past . . . or anything else, for that matter.

If You Follow Me is at once a fish-out-of-water tale, a dark comedy of manners, and a strange kind of love story. Alive with vibrant and unforgettable characters—from an ambitious town matchmaker to a high school student-cum-rap artist wannabe with an addiction to self-tanning lotion—it guides readers over cultural bridges even as it celebrates the awkward, unlikely triumph of the human spirit.

“I love, love, love IF YOU FOLLOW ME. It’s fearlessly honest, occasionally heartbreaking, and extremely funny, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.” - Curtis Sittenfeld, New York Times bestselling author of PREP and AMERICAN WIFE

“How is it that If You Follow Me manages to be at once so funny and so moving? In this beautiful novel, what is most “foreign” to Marina turns out to be her complex relationships with those she thought she knew best. Malena Watrous’s writing is sharp-edged and generous, tragic and true. I would follow her anywhere.” - Katharine Noel, author of Halfway House

“In this beautiful novel, what is most “foreign” to Marina turns out to be her complex relationships with those she thought she knew best. Malena Watrous’s writing is sharp-edged and generous, tragic and true. I would follow her anywhere.” - Katharine Noel, author of Halfway House

“If You Follow Me is the kind of book you finish and then clutch to your heart as you run around telling everyone you know that they have to read it. Watrous has written a book of great genuine warmth, startling honesty, and remarkable power.” - Thisbe Nissen, author of Osprey Island

“I love, love, love If You Follow Me. It’s fearlessly honest, occasionally heartbreaking, and extremely funny, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.” - Curtis Sittenfeld, New York Times bestselling author of PREP and AMERICAN WIFE

“[C]onfident and heartfelt, a finely sketched reminder of the ways in which new loves are like new countries....If You Follow Me will charm all readers who have ever fumbled, offended, raged, and had their hearts broken in a foreign land.” - San Francisco magazine

“A smart, comic first novel.” - New York Times Book Review

“Her writing is direct and conversational. And she is able to deliver an excruciating portrayal of Marina’s internal struggles.” - Eugene Register-Guard

“Graceful, smart, and filled with wonder, If You Follow Me is a heartfelt delight from beginning to end.” - Michelle Richmond, bestselling author of The Year of Fog

“[A] deft, funny, and emotionally acute first novel...Watrous’s book crackles with atmospheric detail and sharp dialogue, and tells a vivid story of an American confronting grief and self-knowledge in an unfamiliar place.” - Boston Globe

“This tragicomic debut novel spunky, feminist and perpetually wrong-footed college grad as she spends four seasons in rural Japan escaping the memory of her father’s suicide.” - Ms. magazine