THIS book will not be read for its literary merits.

The premise of Butterfly In The Wind sounded promising. Set in the mid- to late 19th century, it is the story of Okichi Saito, a girl who, just before her marriage to the man she loves, is forced to become the concubine of the first American Consul in Japan for five years.

After he returns to the United States due to poor health, she returns as a pariah to her hometown.

Given that Kimura's background is in journalism, she might have exercised her 'passion for writing about unique events and personalities' better by writing a more orthodox biography of Okichi.

Okichi's life itself has the potential to be compelling fiction. However, Kimura only touches briefly on the formative years of her life; her brief stint as a geisha and her years as a foreigner's concubine get only one chapter each, and we learn nothing more than the bare bones of how these experiences influenced her attitude towards men and love.

Kimura's fictionalisation of Okichi's life has less nuance than many biographies - each event in her life is narrated by a flatness that one would expect from secondary-school compositions or vanity publications.

The characters remain two-dimensional and there is little complexity or ambivalence in their emotions.

Kimura's lumbering descriptions of their tortured clutching at happiness have less life than a historical treatise would - at least the latter would give readers a better sense of context.

If you like this, read: Aum Shinrikyo: Japan's Unholy Sect by Rei Kimura (2002, US$11.99 or S$17.20, amazon.com). The first sentence of this book is 'The voices of three innocent victims of social madness called for justice from beyond the void that separates the living from the dead but for six long years, no one heard them.' In the same style as Butterfly In The Wind.

Butterfly in the wind
By Rei Kimura
Horizon Books/ Paperback/
182 pages/
$19.26 (with GST) / Major bookstores/**