The Samurai's Garden
The novel
The Samurai’s Garden (1994) by
Gail Tsukiyama is an engaging story of a young boy and four friends who become a part of his life. The story is set between
Japan and
China directly before WWII. In this story, humanity and respect take precedence over cultural differences. I read this as part of
Dolce Bellezza’s Japanese Literature Challenge.
Sick with tuberculosis, the young Chinese protagonist, Stephen, is sent from Hong Kong to recuperate at the family’s seaside summer home in
Tarumi, Japan. In Tarumi, Stephen is able to experience a quiet that allows him to express himself and appreciate the people around him more fully than he had done in the past. Here he is given the time to appreciate people and surroundings for more than their surface beauty and to think more deeply about things.
Tsukiyama’s style flows very easily to this reader’s mind. Written in English, there was no loss of poetry or meaning lost to me in translation, yet at the same time I sensed that Tsukiyama had a strong grasp of the cultural sensibilities of each country she wrote about in the novel.
Labels: fiction, japanese literature challenge, Tsukiyama
Thursday Next: First Among Sequels
Happy New Year!
First Among Sequels (2007) is the latest in the
Thursday Next series by
Jasper Fforde. It is hopefully not the last.
In this installment, Next is living a double triple life, working for the Book World, for the book crime division of
Swindon’s crime enforcement body, and working as one of the owners of a semi-successful
carpet company. At the same time she is trying to motivate her teenage son to stay on track to be one of the key people saving Swindon (and the rest of the world) from upcoming total destruction. Next is a busy person.
This novel is fun to read with many literary allusions, as in all of the Thursday Next series novels, but First Among Sequels is more dependent of the structure of the world Fforde has built in the series than previous Next novels are. Even bearing that in mind, this is a good novel to read on its own or to read after reading the proceeding installments.
Labels: Fforde, fiction, literature
Thousand Cranes
Yasunari Kawabata’s
book
Thousand Cranes translated by Edward Seidensticker reads like a fleshed out poem. This is a story of a man (Kikuji) and his relationships with his deceased father and his father’s two mistresses. It is a delicately told tale illuminating human relations, a tale that can be transferred to a global stage.
I read this as part of the
Japanese Literature Challenge, and it is a great addition to my literary knowledge.
If you are fortunate enough to read Japanese, there is the
original version. This novel was apparently first released in serial version.
Kikuji’s story revolves around the
tea ceremony that his father so loved. The clothes that characters wear as well as their choice of words give insight into their universal characters. In Thousand Cranes, small details are of large import, as they are in a tea ceremony.
Nobel prize winning Kawabata’s style is very poetic in the sense that each word, each sentence means much more than its first-layer reading tells. This is a book to read in small doses so that you can have time to think about what you have read before moving on.
Thousand Cranes ends with unresolved issues that touch all of the characters.
Labels: fiction, japanese literature challenge, Kawabata, morality, nobel
Japanese Literature Challenge
I have decided to join a book challenge! The
Japanese Literature Challenge hosted by Bellezza at
Dolce Bellezza. The guidelines include reading three pieces of Japanese literature between November 30, 2007 and January 30, 2008.
There are many interesting looking books the other participants are reading. I am a bit late to join, but never fear dear readers, I have already picked out my three books. They are...
Thousand Cranes by Yasunari Kawabata
The Samurai's Garden by Gail Tsukiyama
Autumn Bridge by Takashi Matsuoka
Labels: japanese literature challenge, nonfiction
James Tiptree, Jr.
James Tiptree, Jr: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon (2006) is a biography of a revered science fiction author, written by Julie Phillips. Unlike o
ther female creators that I have heard of, Sheldon took her male Tiptree persona far into her real life.
Tiptree was a science fiction writer, and I have been reading a bit of science fiction lately (
as you can see in previous posts). When I read about Tiptree, it reminded me of the
Omni magazines I read as a child.
Tiptree wrote a number of stories that are still cropping up in recent science fiction (SF) anthologies. He was the type of writer whose work other writers admired.
Sheldon led an adventurous life and had experience that most women of her time may not have had (safari adventurer as a child, psychologist, special services analyst) as she was born in 1915. She found that writing as a man (Tiptree) and cloaking her views under the veil of science fiction allowed her to express what she seemed to find otherwise inexpressible.
The next stop for me is reading some of Tiptree’s works. Sadly I had not heard of (or perhaps had not remembered) Tiptree before reading this biography.
Labels: biography, nonfiction, Phillips, sciencefiction, Sheldon
Across A Hundred Mountains
Across a Hundred Mountains (2006) is the debut novel by author
Reyna Grande. It tells the intertwined stories of two women (and their loved ones) who travel through countries and cultures to find family.
Here we read the tale of Juana’s journey through Mexico and the USA to find her father. This tale saddened me, for the hardships that the women go through are too real. Babies are stolen, fathers are lost, innocence is lost too soon. Juana and Adelina see too much of the harsh side of life, but they go on until they are forced to stop.
Labels: family, fiction, Grande, Mexico
Fledgling
Fledgling by
Octavia Butler is really a fast and exciting read. It is the story of a young one, Shori who looses her family and is forced to build herself a new family.
It is a
vampire story.
If I had known it was a vampire story before I started reading it, I would not have started. I am glad that I did not, for it is a great story and I would have missed out. I started it because it was written by Octavia Butler,
an author that I have read a lot of. She is truly a great story teller.
In this story, the vampires call themselves Ina, and they separate themselves by sex. They live in family compounds and have harmonious relations with humans.
Fledgling is an action novel with strong community roots. It is a book that explores some of our human moral dilemmas by clothing them in a fictional world of vampires. Shori the young girl/vampire wakes and found she has lost everything (including most of her history) and everyone, so she makes a community for herself as she learns about who she is and the world around her.
Labels: Butler, community, fiction, vampires
