THE FLOATING WORLD by Cynthia Kadohata...

THE FLOATING WORLD by Cynthia Kadohata (Ballantine: $4.95). Kadohata’s well-crafted and unpretentious first novel focuses on a Japanese-American girl’s coming of age amid the residual prejudice of the Postwar era. Olivia Ann Osaka experiences a childhood haunted by the ghosts of her formidable grandmother; her real father, whom she never knew and her mother’s other lovers. Her name, an unharmonious mixture of Occidental and Oriental syllables, reflects the confused identity that leads her stepfather to try to establish roots for the family in California and Arkansas. To exorcise the ghosts of the past--and present--Olivia discovers she must leave her family and establish an identity of her own.