BOOKS . . . AUDREY HEPBURN'S NECK:

The gracious and redeeming delight of Alan Brown's first novel (Pocket Books; 290 pages; $21) is that it turns all the standard expectations on their head by presenting Japan from the inside out, examining America from afar through the wide eyes of a young Japanese illustrator. In effect, Brown turns the usual 'The Japanese are so strange' cliches inside-out, says TIME's Pico Iyer: "We pass through many of the rites of an American coming-of-age storya confounding love affair, memories of a distant childhood, a visit from a parent, the unfolding of family secretsbut all seen in a Japanese context, as if Brown had written an all-American tale to be read from right to left. Gently, with sensitivity and tact, the very notion of 'foreignness' is peeled away to some deeper level where passports dont apply. With the beautiful control of a born novelist, Brown shows us that clarity, as much as charity, begins abroad."