SOURCE: "Tokyo Prose," in Los Angeles Times Book Review, March 24, 1996, p. 6.

[Salter is an American poet. In the following review, she lauds the imagery and figurative language in Audrey Hepburn's Neck but states that the book "sometimes staggers a bit under the weight of its author's desire to inject every possible theme into it."]

"What was the pivotal event, the thing that changed the direction of my entire life, that carried me halfway around the world?," asks Paul, a gay American living in the vibrant Japan of Alan Brown's first novel. "A photograph of Yukio Mishima in a loincloth. That's what."

Paul's friend Toshi, the young Japanese protagonist of Audrey Hepburn's Neck has no choice but to accept the American's take on the irrationality of human attraction—and its far-reaching consequences. Toshi is himself trying without much success to get out of a passionate mess with his lunatic...