With "Big in Japan," an erotic coming-of-age novel set in Japan, M. Thomas Gammarino has joined the likes of Jay McInerny ("Ransom"), Brad Leithauser ("Equal Distance"), and countless other non-Japanese writers who spend a little time in Japan when young, and then — surprise, surprise! — write novels featuring non-Japanese who spend a little time in Japan when young. So well-trodden is the novelistic path Gammarino has chosen, in fact, that it is almost as if he is working in a rigorous and established literary form.

The interest in such an exercise lies in seeing how artful a writer can be within the constraints the form imposes. There's no point in writing, for example, a 38 syllable "haiku," or a three-line "sonnet." The artist must struggle to make it new, but needs to do so in ways that don't violate the form's fundamental rules. In "Big in Japan," Gammarino paints largely within the established lines and gives us, in doing so, a diverting read.

"Brain peered into Martina's hole," the novel begins, and the chuckle with which most readers will respond to this unexpected introduction — Martina, by the way, is a guitar — is a reaction that will be repeated throughout. The opening paragraph goes on to reveal that Brain ("formerly Brian") has been working on a "Gregorian speed-polka power ballad" and that he's neurotic enough to believe that if he doesn't "go for a drive at precisely 11:11, as promised to himself by himself several hours ago, then something bad was sure to happen."