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Title: The Gardens of Kyoto: A Novel by Kate Walbert ISBN: 0-684-86949-7 Publisher: Scribner Pub. Date: 05 March, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.87 (23 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Very original, poignant . . .
Comment: Rather than reading this book, I may have absorbed it! "The Gardens of Kyoto" is unique in plot and characterization. The tone is almost gothic, with a wonderful sense of place, as Walbert explores the cycle of lost love -- damaged men and the women who love them -- caused by war.
Serious and studious Ellen falls in love with her cousin Randall, only son born to an influential judge late in his life. A lonely boy with a passion for vocabulary words, reading encyclopedias and seeing ghosts, Randall reveals his real self to Ellen, trusting her with his secrets. Raised by a woman he later learns is not his mother in a rambling farmhouse once used by the Underground Railroad to harbor escaped slaves, Randall is sent to Okinawa after WWII and dies under circumstances equally as mysterious as the rest of his life. He bequeaths Ellen his private journal and a book about the gardens of Kyoto, Japan. The book figures prominently throughout the story, the book's subject matter a haunting symbol of life.
Years later, as a college student, Ellen meets a young soldier, Lt. Henry Rock. Henry falls for Ellen's troubled and indifferent friend, Daphne, and begins a correspondence. Intending the letters for Daphne, Ellen is the one who receives them and falls in love with the writer. After the war, Henry finds Ellen and begins an ill-fated relationship.
The book spans the 1940's and 1950's, through World War II and the Korean War. In the book, the men who survive the wars, Roger, Ellen's brother-in-law, and Henry are "damaged", so affected by their experience that they are changed forever, unreachable by those who love them.
Chapter 11 of book 5 quotes Iago, "'I am not what I am ....' We are none of us who we are." This paragraph flew out at me as soon as I read it. Everyone hides his private demons from public view. A wonderful summation of the novel.
This is a starkly written novel, and perhaps it is this starkness that provokes the emotions. As I read this, I truly did hurt for Ellen and her losses. I felt Randall's isolation, Henry's disillusionment, Daphne's self-destructiveness. The minor character's, such as Randall's birth mother, Ruby, and Ellen's sisters, Rita and Betty, made brief appearances, but left big impressions. The writing and even the dust jacket are sepia-toned, but the story is so emotionally colorful that it is hard to walk away from it.
Rating: 5
Summary: Absolutely amazing.
Comment: I'm an avid reader, and this book is one of the most beautiful things I've ever had the privilage to read. Both haunting and thoughtful, lyrical and down-to-earth, it manages to paint a heartbreaking story about love; both true love and love at first sight, and how the ramifications of both can affect a person for the rest of their life. The narrator spends the course of the book struggling with her love for her departed cousin and the odd love she feels towards a man who sent her letters throughout World War Two without knowing she was the recipient.
The entire story is layed out as if it is being told to the narrator's daughter, and we come to find out that it is the explanation of this young mother's life and why she made the choices that brought her daughter about.
Kate Walbert's writing is, in a word, wistful. This is the sort of book that it's painful to reach the end of, because by the last page you feel so deeply connected to the characters you don't want to stop hearing about them. For anyone who read and enjoyed this book, I recommend Walbert's other novel, "Where She Went" -- it is written much in the style of "Gardens", and actually has a few similar plot devices.
Rating: 4
Summary: The tyranny of social conventions
Comment: This is a book to give to those people who lament the decadence of modern society and look longingly to a more innocent time: a time when every husband was right, every wife happy, every soldier heroic, and every girl a virgin until marriage.
Apparently, that's what social mores of the 40's and 50's insisted on. So what could you do, if your life wasn't as picture-perfect as it was supposed to be? The characters in Walberg's book face this dilemma. Some of them sacrifice their desires in order to fit in, while others die themsleves as sacrificial lambs on the altar of conformity, and the rest simply spend their lives lying about who they are.
Five characters in this book are soldiers; none fits the "hero" mold that society prescribes for them. Even the one who died on Iwo Jima was not killed in combat, but died accidentally after the fighting was over. Yet this isn't really a book about war - more about a society that worked so hard to keep up appearances, that no one was allowed to be different, or even human.
Consider the plight of the narrator's oldest sister. In one of the most poignant moments in the book, she breaks decorum by crying at the dinner table in front of the whole family, then confesses a desperate and shocking problem. Members of the family silently look to the father, waiting for his response. But Rita's problem is so far outside the bounds of what "nice people" talk about, that all he can do is mumble weak, useless platitudes at her. The pitiful thing is that he adores his daughter -- but social conventions won't let him help her, or even admit that her problem is real. When the problem leads to her death, the whole family continues to lie to eachother as if they never saw it coming. And in the ultimate victory of good etiquette, the narrator politely thanks her sister's killer just hours after Rita's death, knowing full well what he has done.
Those were the good old days? Thank God I missed them.
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Title: Our Kind : A Novel in Stories by Kate Walbert ISBN: 0743245598 Publisher: Scribner Pub. Date: 06 April, 2004 List Price(USD): $23.00 |
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Title: Three Junes by JULIA GLASS ISBN: 0385721420 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 22 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Where She Went: Stories by Kate Walbert ISBN: 1889330159 Publisher: Sarabande Books Pub. Date: 01 August, 1998 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Brick Lane: A Novel by Monica Ali ISBN: 0743243307 Publisher: Scribner Pub. Date: 09 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress : A Novel by DAI SIJIE ISBN: 0385722206 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 29 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
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