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Title: Snow Falling on Cedars
Author: David Guterson
Genre: Literary mystery
Thingummies: 3.5
Synopsis: A decade after WWII, a Japanese American in a small northwest coast fishing village is accused of murdering a German American, bringing old tensions and unresolved love to the surface.
Thoughts: This quiet, elegant book initially appears to be a murder mystery, but gradually reveals itself to be more concerned with prejudice and curdled love.
Over the course of a murder trial, interlocking flashbacks establish the web of relationships in the island village and show how the attack on Pearl Harbor disrupts those relationships and forces latent racism to the surface. After the war, villagers returned and things settled back down, but they merely paper over the damage. The murder accusation brings everything back into the light.
The novel maintains a steady slow burn throughout, with only a couple of flare ups of true passion. Numbness and suppressed feelings are repeatedly alluded to in the poetic descriptions of the snowstorm that slowly blankets the town. Overall, I loved the language and the subtle quietness that leaves most emotions unexpressed.
Having read The Hotel at the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, I do feel a sense of deja vu with the plot of the sweet beautiful Japanese American girl cruelly sent to the internment camps with her family, despite having done nothing wrong. (A note--this book did it first, and does it better.) I think on their own, neither one would have bothered me. But I have to admit a growing cyncism--the internment camps were an awful thing. Tugging our heartstrings by having our hero's innocent childhood love torn away by them seems a needlessly manipulative way of bringing attention to this injustice. I feel like I now want to read a book about an adult with genuine ties to Japan sent to the camps--someone who has mixed allegiances and mixed emotions, who shows us the camps through a more complex, adult lens. It makes them no more justifiable, but it would make for a more interesting story.
Really, though, my major complaint is that I feel like the story is structured for an emotional payout for Ishmael, the reporter who is the closest thing to a protagonist. He's been emotionally destroyed by the one-two punch of Hatsue's dumping him and the emotional and physical wounds he's taken in the war. He spends most of the book in a spiteful numbness. And while his actions do provide a catalyst in the end, I never felt like his emotions caught up. He makes his big decision on impulse, without particular reflection. So it doesn't really feel like it counts. The book ends with descriptions of events when until that point, it had been descriptions of emotional states. Suddenly stating "and then this happened, the end" gives us no chance to understand how the resolution impacts the characters. If it had been a plot driven book, that would have been fine. But up until that point, actions had been secondary to emotional revelation. I felt cheated, as if the author had promised me one thing and delivered another. It's a disappointment that does not negate the previous beauty, but it does cast a shadow.
Author: David Guterson
Genre: Literary mystery
Thingummies: 3.5
Synopsis: A decade after WWII, a Japanese American in a small northwest coast fishing village is accused of murdering a German American, bringing old tensions and unresolved love to the surface.
Thoughts: This quiet, elegant book initially appears to be a murder mystery, but gradually reveals itself to be more concerned with prejudice and curdled love.
Over the course of a murder trial, interlocking flashbacks establish the web of relationships in the island village and show how the attack on Pearl Harbor disrupts those relationships and forces latent racism to the surface. After the war, villagers returned and things settled back down, but they merely paper over the damage. The murder accusation brings everything back into the light.
The novel maintains a steady slow burn throughout, with only a couple of flare ups of true passion. Numbness and suppressed feelings are repeatedly alluded to in the poetic descriptions of the snowstorm that slowly blankets the town. Overall, I loved the language and the subtle quietness that leaves most emotions unexpressed.
Having read The Hotel at the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, I do feel a sense of deja vu with the plot of the sweet beautiful Japanese American girl cruelly sent to the internment camps with her family, despite having done nothing wrong. (A note--this book did it first, and does it better.) I think on their own, neither one would have bothered me. But I have to admit a growing cyncism--the internment camps were an awful thing. Tugging our heartstrings by having our hero's innocent childhood love torn away by them seems a needlessly manipulative way of bringing attention to this injustice. I feel like I now want to read a book about an adult with genuine ties to Japan sent to the camps--someone who has mixed allegiances and mixed emotions, who shows us the camps through a more complex, adult lens. It makes them no more justifiable, but it would make for a more interesting story.
Really, though, my major complaint is that I feel like the story is structured for an emotional payout for Ishmael, the reporter who is the closest thing to a protagonist. He's been emotionally destroyed by the one-two punch of Hatsue's dumping him and the emotional and physical wounds he's taken in the war. He spends most of the book in a spiteful numbness. And while his actions do provide a catalyst in the end, I never felt like his emotions caught up. He makes his big decision on impulse, without particular reflection. So it doesn't really feel like it counts. The book ends with descriptions of events when until that point, it had been descriptions of emotional states. Suddenly stating "and then this happened, the end" gives us no chance to understand how the resolution impacts the characters. If it had been a plot driven book, that would have been fine. But up until that point, actions had been secondary to emotional revelation. I felt cheated, as if the author had promised me one thing and delivered another. It's a disappointment that does not negate the previous beauty, but it does cast a shadow.
