Reel Bay, Jana Larson
Reel Bay, Jana Larson
List: $24.99 | Sale: $17.50
Club: $12.49

Reel Bay

Author: Jana Larson

Narrator: Stephanie Willing

Unabridged: 7 hr 45 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 01/19/2021


Synopsis

What was Takako Konishi really doing in North Dakota, and why did she end up dead? Did she get lost and freeze to death, as the police concluded, while searching for the fictional treasure buried in a snowbank at the end of the Coen Brothers film Fargo? Or was it something else that brought her there? Unrequited love, ritual suicide, a meteor shower, a far-flung search for purpose?The seed of an obsession took root in struggling film student Jana Larson when she chanced upon a news bulletin about the case. Over the years and across continents, the material Jana gathered in her search for the real Takako outgrew multiple attempts at screenplays and became this remarkable genre-bending essay that leans into the space between fact and fiction, life and death, author and subject, reality and delusion.n

About Jana Larson

Jana Larson is the author of Reel Bay. She holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from Hamline University and a BA in anthropology from the University of California, Santa Cruz. As a filmmaker, she has received awards from the Princess Grace Foundation and the Minnesota State Arts Board and has shown her work at festivals and the Walker Art Center. She lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Rachael

I loved the structure and the topic. This is truly an essay-as-book, as Larson is trying to figure out the motives of Takako Konishi. Who was this woman? What drew her to Fargo and then rural Minnesota, where she died a mysterious death in the woods, surrounded by two bottles of champagne and a vari......more

Goodreads review by Päivi

I found this book in a swedish literary magazine "Vi läser" (highly recommended to anyone familiar with the language!), where the finnish author Monika Fagerholm (also highly recommended, her pieces have been translated to english) lists her latest audiobook favorites, this being one of them. Withou......more

Goodreads review by AngieA

From the back of the book (which is actually 273 pages, not 224) Equal parts memoir, mystery, reclaimed screenplay, and travelogue, "Reel Bay" charts Jana Larson's unusual journey toward understanding another woman's life. Perhaps. If she finally understood Takako's life, she didn't reveal that info......more