When he hears her favourite Beatles song, Toru Watanabe recalls his first love Naoko, the girlfriend of his best friend Kizuki. Immediately he is transported back almost twenty years to his student days in Tokyo, adrift in a world of uneasy friendships, casual sex, passion, loss and desire - to a time when an impetuous young woman called Midori marches into his life and he has to choose between the future and the past.

This book is undeniably hip,full of student uprisings,free love,booze and 1960's pop.It's also genuinely emotionally engaging,and describes the highs of adolescence as well as the lows'Independent on Sunday.