To Hanako Shimoda, recently divorced, Luciano Pavarotti is a god. To her daughter, Emily, this fixation on Pavarotti is a harmless fantasy, the byproduct of loneliness. Meeting Luciano is the story of what happens when Hanako acts on her fantasy and invites opera star Pavarotti to dinner in their Westchester County home. Emily, with no real career plan, has gone back after college to work at her old summer job - waiting tables at the local Japanese steakhouse. Even worse than wearing a fake kimono and obi is that she's living at home with her mother. At first, her mom seems pretty much her old self - still reliving her Japanese childhood; still affecting the airs of a European sophisticate; still brewing espresso, cooking Italian, and singing arias from Rigoletto while she cleans; still idolizing Luciano Pavarotti. But when Hanako hires Alex, a handsome Greek, to renovate the kitchen, Emily begins to worry. And when Alex, who seems to be getting very cozy with her mother, spills the secret that the renovation is in preparation for a visit from Pavarotti, Emily is thrown into a wonderfully familiar quandary: how to deal with a parent who might be losing it. First-time novelist Anna Esaki-Smith has a wry, understated approach to the themes of assimilation, growing up, striking out on shaky ground, finding yourself - and loving your mother. Like a reflecting pool in a Japanese garden, Meeting Luciano gradually reveals the beauty of its subtle design. Anna Esaki-Smith was born in 1961 in Tarrytown, New York. She earned a bachelor's degree in Asian Studies from Cornell University in 1983 and a master's degree from the Columbia University School of Journalism in 1987. In 1991, she began work toward an MFA from the Columbia University Graduate School of the Arts, but left just short of a degree to work as a Newsweek correspondent in Hong Kong. Esaki-Smith's career as a journalist and writer for Reuters, Newsweek, and Success has taken her all over the world, including several posts throughout Asia, where she has worked as a news correspondent. She currently lives in Shanghai with her husband and two sons. an excerpt from Chapters One and Two of Meeting Luciano a novel by Anna Esaki-Smith My mother left for the opera in the late afternoon. Whenever she went to the opera, she made an effort to dress up, digging into her crowded closet for a pocketbook and shoes that matched, spraying old, heavy perfume in her hair. Although raised in Japan during the war, she prided herself on an appreciation of the West, to the point of distancing herself from her own culture. When visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art, she avoided the Asian wing. She never attended touring performances of kabuki or bunraku, and she criticized the limited repertoire of Japanese cuisine. She fancied herself not American but broadly European, having worked as a secretary at the British embassy in Tokyo before getting married. She followed what she believed to be a distinctly European manner, writing careful letters when a phone call would do, saying "Pardon?" instead of "What?" Whenever she ate soup, she'd scoop the spoon away from her before lifting it silently to her mouth, taking care never to slurp the way Japanese do when eating noodles. She inevitably dribbled soup down her chin. She studied Romanesque architecture in her middle age, and more recently had grown obsessed with Italian opera. It was as though she were on a quest, moving through the geography of Western civilization in search of an essence that could finally transform her. She tried to make us as European as she possibly could, too, serving us crustless cucumber sandwiches for lunch and giving us leather satchels to take to school instead of backpacks. Still, she fit imperfectly into this world. After dinner at a French restaurant, she'd return home and make herself a bowl of

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