"Meet the households Kiuchi, Takigawa, Yasunaga, and Oda... In this gently twisted domestic fable, award-winning novelist Senji Kuroi explores modern Japan through the lives of four families who live on a typical street in suburban Tokyo. Beset by visions, uncomfortable marriages, and strange rumblings of the past and future, these "traditional" Japanese families find the world both magical and perplexing. Are things falling apart or coming together? Is any of this real? Originally serialized as twelve interleaved stories, Life in the Cul-de-Sac provides a unique and intimate look at contemporary Japanese society."--BOOK JACKET.