Lunchbreak Program with Novelist Stephanie Scott: What’s Left of Me is Yours

Join us for a Book Stall Lunchbreak event with Book Group leader Nancy Buehler talking with author Stephanie Scott about Scott’s new novel, What’s Left of Me is Yours.

About the Book: In Japan, a covert industry has grown up around the “wakaresaseya” (literally “breaker-upper”), a person hired by one spouse to seduce the other in order to gain the advantage in divorce proceedings. When Sato hires Kaitaro, a wakaresaseya agent, to have an affair with his wife, Rina, he assumes it will be an easy case. But Sato has never truly understood Rina or her desires. and Kaitaro’s job is to do exactly that–until he does it too well. While Rina remains ignorant of the circumstances that brought them together, she and Kaitaro fall in a desperate, singular love, setting in motion a series of violent acts that will forever haunt her daughter’s life. Told from alternating points of view and across the breathtaking landscapes of Japan, Stephanie Scott exquisitely renders the affair and its intricate repercussions.

“Fascinating…The world [Scott] creates in What’s Left of Me Is Yours feels very sure under foot: deeply researched, but delicately described… She braids her different characters’ timelines together with sophistication, her storytelling harmoniously well-constructed. The big questions over whether it’s better to lie or to tell a difficult truth, and what might constitute a betrayal, are layered across generations and decades and there is strength in the subtlety with which Scott slowly unpacks them.” –The Guardian

About the Author: Stephanie Scott is a Singaporean and British writer who was born and raised in South East Asia. She read English Literature at York and Cambridge and holds an M.St in Creative Writing from Oxford. Scott was awarded a BAJS Toshiba Studentship for her anthropological work on her novel What’s Left of Me Is Yours and has been made a member of the British Japanese Law Association as a result of her research. What’s Left of Me Is Yours is a New York Times Editor’s Pick, a Brooklyn Book Festival Debut of the Year, and a Guardian US Best Debut of 2020.

Today’s interviewer, Nancy Buehler, is a frequent book group leader at The Book Stall –and indeed across the Chicago area.