Stephanie Scott in Conversation With Margaret Malone

A gripping debut set in modern-day Tokyo and inspired by a true crime — for readers of Everything I Never Told You and The Perfect Nanny — Stephanie Scott’s What’s Left of Me Is Yours (Doubleday) charts a young woman’s search for the truth about her mother’s life — and her murder. 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 Satō hires Kaitarō, a wakaresaseya agent, to have an affair with his wife, Rina, he assumes it will be an easy case. But Satō has never truly understood Rina or her desires and Kaitarō’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 Kaitarō 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, Scott probes the thorny psychological and moral grounds of the actions we take in the name of love, asking where we draw the line between passion and possession. Scott will be joined in conversation by Margaret Malone, author of the story collection People Like You, finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award and winner of the Balcones Fiction Prize.

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