The rain has made everything cold and damp, and it’s the perfect evening for Kyoko to exact her revenge. After years of rage and grief over her mother’s death, Kyoko has decided who is to blame: a man named Daniel, a fellow violinist who had wooed her mother Emi, during their time together in an orchestra & then dropped her, driving her to her death. Kyoko follows the unsuspecting Daniel home & manages to get her rash kidnapping plot off the ground & really, what could go wrong? The Fetishist is the story of three people Kyoko, a young singer in a punk band who cannot find enough ways to channel her angry sorrow; Daniel, a seemingly hapless man who finally faces the wreckage of his past; and Alma, the love of Daniel’s life, long adored for her beauty and talent, but who spends her final days examining if she was ever, truly, loved. It’s a beautiful, piercing and timely story that confronts race, ideals of femininity, complicity and visibility. Written and completed before the celebrated author’s death in 2019, it’s startlingly relevant and prescient, as wise and powerful as it is utterly moving.
