Please Enjoy Your Happiness: A Memoir

by Paul Brinkley-Rogers Narrated by James Langton

Overview

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, 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.

Editorial Reviews

APRIL 2017 - AudioFile

In the words of the American lyricist Alan Jay Lerner, "There's always one you can't forget." Narrator James Langton bears listeners on the waves of memory with a lightness in his polished British voice that belies the sadness of a love affair never meant to last. Brinkley-Rogers recalls his profound relationship with an older woman named Yukiko while stationed in Japan in 1959 at the age of 19. Langton gives Yukiko a lilting, sweet voice with the subtly clipped tones of someone whose first language is not English. Even the raw parts of the story are told with an earnestness that speaks to the goodness of the world, and the listener can't help but fall into the tale. This is a work that is profoundly human and lovingly rendered. E.E. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

Daily Mail (UK)

"[A] haunting memoir."

Elin Hilderbrand

"Please enjoy...the most romantic memoir you're likely to read in a lifetime."

The Lady (UK)

"A moving memoir exploring the last imprint of his first love."

Daily Express (UK)

"Enchanting."

From the Publisher

"Please enjoy…the most romantic memoir you're likely to read in a lifetime."-–Elin Hilderbrand, New York Times bestselling author of HERE'S TO US

APRIL 2017 - AudioFile

In the words of the American lyricist Alan Jay Lerner, "There's always one you can't forget." Narrator James Langton bears listeners on the waves of memory with a lightness in his polished British voice that belies the sadness of a love affair never meant to last. Brinkley-Rogers recalls his profound relationship with an older woman named Yukiko while stationed in Japan in 1959 at the age of 19. Langton gives Yukiko a lilting, sweet voice with the subtly clipped tones of someone whose first language is not English. Even the raw parts of the story are told with an earnestness that speaks to the goodness of the world, and the listener can't help but fall into the tale. This is a work that is profoundly human and lovingly rendered. E.E. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170566525
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	08/02/2016
Edition description:	Unabridged

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