Synopsis
Please Enjoy Your Happiness is a beautifully written coming-of-age memoir based on the English author's summer-long love affair with a remarkable older Japanese woman. Whilst serving as a seaman at the age of nineteen, Paul Brinkley-Rogers met Kaji Yukiko, a sophisticated, highly intellectual Japanese woman, who was on the run from her vicious gangster boyfriend, a member of Japan's brutal crime syndicate the yakuza.
Trying to create a perfect experience of purity, she took him under her wing, sharing their love of poetry, cinema and music and many an afternoon at the Mozart Café. Brinkley-Rogers, now in his seventies, re-reads Yukiko's letters and finally recognizes her as the love of his life, receiving at last the gifts she tried to bestow on him. Reaching across time and continents, Brinkley-Rogers shows us how to reclaim a lost love, inviting us all to celebrate those loves of our lives that never do end.
Details
Reviews
“The most romantic memoir you’re likely to read in a lifetime”Elin Hilderbrand, New York Times bestselling author of Here’s to Us
“A haunting memoir”Daily Mail
“Brinkley-Rogers’ young innocence is poignant, and the picture he paints of times past, Japanese culture, and the making of a writer is memorable”Booklist
“A moving memoir exploring the lasting imprint of his first love”The Lady, The Lady
