''Bicycle Days'' is the debut novel by American author

John Burnham Schwartz John Burnham Schwartz (born 1965) is an American novelist and screenwriter. Schwartz is best known for his novels ''Reservation Road'' (1998) and ''The Commoner'' (2008). His fifth novel, ''Northwest Corner'', a sequel to ''Reservation Road'', was ...

published in 1989 on his 24th birthday. It began as an undergraduate thesis for

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

's East Asian Studies department and became a critically acclaimed bestseller. It was inspired by his time living in Japan.

Plot Introduction

The book follows Alec Stern as he arrives in Tokyo, newly graduated from Yale. He starts a new job, living with a Japanese family; the book portrays his life in Japan as he adapts to the culture, made far easier by his ability to speak Japanese ...

Reception

Reviews were generally positive : *'' The New York Times'', "Reminiscent of '' A Good Man in Africa''...or one of Kingsley Amis's gentler comodies of manners." *'' Publishers Weekly'' called this a "promising, if overly self-absorbed debut novel." *'' People'' commented "it's too bad Schwartz wrote his intimate story in the third person. As it is, Schwartz outlines the most incidental happenings of Alec's life without letting us get inside his mind. It's as if a great deal yet not nearly enough has been revealed in ''Bicycle Days''."Picks and Pans Review: Bicycle Days : People.com
Retrieved 2013-09-01.

External links

References

{{Reflist 1989 American novels Novels set in Tokyo Simon & Schuster books 1989 debut novels Japan in non-Japanese culture Summit Books books