Izumi Suzuki, this bad girl, lives life as an underground rock and roll groupie member in this semi-autobiographical novel, Set My Heart on Fire. This novel offers a glimpse into Suzuki’s fast-paced lifestyle during the height of the near-end youth culture. Think the Beat generation, counterculture, and general rebellion against the grain. Fueled by passion for music, musical men, and recreational use of pharmaceutical drugs – this lifestyle becomes a memory when Suzuki finally settles for a man who intrigues her like no other.
Being an it-girl enmeshed in the Shinjuku to Yokohama and Japanese underground music scene is still apparently alienating. Young Suzuki and other women are second to the men in this novel. However, her perspective of her personal experience during the era portrays a thrilling time full of raw and real characters. Gritty, chaotic, and nostalgic, sometimes a little bit of rock and roll can heal those fighting in the frontlines of wanting to become someone glamorous.
Suzuki is shameless and liberated. She lays it all out there for everyone to frankly devour. She quickly gets involved with the next casual entanglement or affair without reason. Soon, this young libertine’s passive behavior gets her into trouble. In fact, Suzuki lives life like a rolling stone until she meets a man named Jun. She is at all charmed by this dark and commanding man, yet she could not get away from him. For better or worse, Jun changes her life trajectory entirely.
The novel reads easy yet gets blurry in scenes where Suzuki downs a random drug cocktail or drowns herself in some addiction. There is a lot of addiction, but not for mere escape. There’s nothing else to do on a random day than to waste youth with a plethora of vices. Being numb is a state of mind Suzuki seeks, but there is an unspoken yearning through the lifeless madness. There is that biting yearning of longing to become one with another fully and completely. There is a feeling of hope that something better would come, that there is some greater purpose to be attained even through hard knock circumstances. Through the haze and daze, Suzuki’s brilliance appears in insightful yet vulnerable introspection and train of thought.
Izumi Suzuki, only in her 30’s before passing, paved her right to amass cult-like fans and the status as a micro-celebrity in science fiction. This novel is different than her usual array of short stories consisting of ethereal realities, aliens, witchcraft, and cyberpunk fervor. This novel is more realistic than fiction since it is the closest thing to an autobiography of the eccentric artist’s younger life and how she met her fated jazz musician husband. Foil-like, the protagonist reflects Izumi Suzuki’s candid exploration of desire and demise during height of the Japanese psychedelic underground music scene of the 1970’s.
