The Garden of Evening Mists

Finished May 18

The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng

This literary novel is a slow-paced read, which I took my time over. In Malaya in 1951, the central character Yun Ling Teoh went to the Cameron Highlands area of Malaya to follow her sister's dream. She and her sister Yun Hong had been in a Japanese internment camp for three years, a remote camp that the prisoners didn't know the location of. Yun Ling was the only survivor of the camp, and she and her sister had kept their spirits up by talking about the Japanese gardens that they'd seen and what her sister wanted to create in her garden. Since the war ended, Yun Ling had worked for a few months as a researcher for the War Crimes Tribunal before getting a law degree at Cambridge. She returned to Malaya and became a deputy public prosecutor, but her unhappiness at the way the English-controlled government had dealt with the Japanese war crimes drove her feelings to become too vocal for her superiors. 

She is staying with a family friend, Magnus Pretorius and his wife Emily at their tea plantation, Majuba. She plans to visit out their neighbour, Aritomo, a Japanese man who had once been a gardener for the Japanese emperor and has been building his own garden, Yugiri, since coming to Malaya. She has asked him to design a garden for her sister, but he won't decide until they meet. 

Instead, Yun Ling becomes his apprentice, learning the craft of this type of garden by doing the work herself. She is the one who passes his instructions to the local workers, but she also works just as hard as they do. 

Thirty-six years after that first visit, Yun Ling returns to Yugiri after resigning from her position as a judge for the Supreme Court. She will be meeting with a Japanese historian specializing in wood block printing about using Aritomo's blocks in a book. She also meets her old friend Frederik, the nephew of Magnus, who now runs Majuba. Aritomo had bequeathed Yugiri and the copyright for all his writing and art to Yun Ling, but she hasn't visited in years and finds the house and garden both needing much work. 

The novel moves back and forth in time. In the early 1950s, Malaya was still ruled by the British, and there were communist rebels fighting in the jungle, killing the foreign estate owners, and causing unease across the country. In 1987, the country of Malaysia is independent, calm, and a tourist destination. 

We see how the relationship between Yun Ling and Aritomo grew as they worked together on the garden and how she dealt with her hatred of the Japanese through this growth of her abilities and outlook. There are still unanswered questions that Yun Ling must decide whether to pursue. And she must make plans herself, both for her own story, and that of Yugiri. 

This book is wonderful and eye-opening. The characters are complex and the story is as well. The writing brings the setting to life, not only the garden, but the Cameron highlands themselves. You can see the jungle, the forest mists, and the way that both Majuba and Yugiri have put their own visions on their land. This book made me reflect on many things as I read it. With themes of memory and forgiveness the book is one I will think of often. 

The Fervor

Finished March 10

The Fervor by Alma Katsu

This novel combines historical fiction with horror. 

The story begin in 1944, and Meiko Briggs and her daughter Aiko are in Minidoka, a Japanese internment camp in Idaho. Meiko's husband Jamie is a pilot, currently serving in the Pacific. Through the novel we learn how they came to be where they are now after his deployment. 

We also see Archie, one of Jamie's friends, as he and his wife Elsie take a group of children to a fishing area in the mountains near them. When an explosion happens and people are hurt, Archie begins questioning why. 

We also see Fran, a journalist in Nebraska, as she witnesses an explosion and discovers something interesting in the aftermath when she is in a remote area on a tryst with her lover. 

Along with these three stories, that gradually converge, are excerpts from a Japanese diary from seventeen years earlier, when a scientist studying winds comes across another discovery. 

This historical narrative becomes horror when people at the camp, in Nebraska, and in other places start to die from a strange disease. With a group of men in suits and expensive cars recently arrived at the camp, Meiko catches one of them in the kitchen at night and begins to suspect that they are using the Japanese there to conduct some kind of experiment. 

This novel is gripping and scary as you follow the clues to figure out who is doing what and whether anyone can be trusted. 

Requiem

Finished October 24
Requiem by Frances Itani
Itani is an amazing writer and her books never fail to capture me. Her writing just flows so naturally. This novel is about Bin, a painter, who has recently lost his wife to a stroke. The sudden death has hit both Bin and his son Greg very hard. Bin and his family were among the many Japanese to be forcibly moved from Canada's west coast after Pearl Harbour, and they spent the war years at an internment camp in the Fraser River valley. As Bin struggles with grief, he decides to drive from his home in Ottawa across Canada to the camp, accompanied by his dog Basil. The war years and what happened during them and as a result of them are something Bin has never really faced and dealt with, despite his wife's encouragement to do so.
The river that the camp lay beside was the first river to capture Bin's artistry, and rivers have become a major theme in his art ever since. Bin's memories move back and forth to happier days to with his wife and his childhood during and following the internment as he wanders back west. Music is another theme here, one that he can date to his life before Pearl Harbor, and that was intensified with his relationship with Okuma-san, and later a shared love with his wife. The music of Beethoven, his first love, carries him back across the country, both consoling him and reminding him as he goes.
This is a novel of feeling, a novel of grief, a novel of consolation. A joy to read.

Japanese Internment

Finished September 20
Tallgrass by Sandra Dallas
This book is told from the point of view of Rennie Stroud, a 13-year-old Colorado girl and begins in 1942 after Pearl Harbor. Rennie's older sister has gone to live and work in a factory in Denver, and her older brother Buddy left college to enlist. An internment camp for Japanese has been build near their small town, only a mile or so from the Stroud farm. Rennie struggles to form her own opinion of the situation looking at both her family and the townspeople. Rennie's father Loyal, is a deeply ethical man, and he knows that this internment is wrong and that Americans have been denied their rights. Rennie's mother Mary is worried about the opinions of the other ladies in her sewing group, even as she agrees with her husband. Rennie's grandmother is fading into dementia and goes between moments of lucidity and wandering.
Feeling in the town against the Japanese grows when a young girl is raped and murdered and the sheriff cannot find the culprit.
Loyal stands by his principles and hires some of the young Japanese men to assist with his farming. As the Japanese begin working on farms in the neighbourhood, more see them for the individuals they are. Rennie gets to know the young workers on their farm and grows close to Daisy a Japanese girl they hire to help in the house. Rennie also begins to see the various townspeople with new eyes, and works to support her best friend and her family. Rennie also sees that fighting back isn't always the right way to go about defending your actions, and that some people won't see what they don't want to.
A great book for older teens.

First Novel

Finished February 12
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford
This is a fascinating look at the world of racial identity during the Second World War.
The main character, Henry Lee, was born in Seattle to a Chinese couple, and educated in Chinese until the Americans entered the war. At that point his father got him accepted into a scholarship program at the white school. As part of his entry he worked in the school cafeteria at lunch, dishing up food to his classmates. He also works after school, cleaning.
When he is joined by another Asian, he is at first unsure what to do, but grows to bond with the girl, Keiko Okabe, who was also born in Seattle, but to a Japanese couple. Her family is better educated than his, with her father working as a lawyer, and thus more open to the two being friends.
Henry has also formed a friendship with a black jazz musician, Sheldon. Rather than have his lunch stolen every day at school, he gives it to Sheldon on his way to school, after stopping to listen to him play on the streetcorner. Keiko also loves the music Sheldon plays, and the two try to listen to him play at a nightclub, getting them noticed by another jazz musician who writes a piece in their honor.
As the war continues, and the Japanese are harassed and then evacuated to camps, Henry struggles with his feelings for Keiko and his family's attitudes toward the Chinese as well as to their place in America.
The story moves back and forth between the war years, and Henry's life in 1986 after his wife has died. Henry's memories are awakened after the discovery in the basement of a hotel of possessions of Japanese citizens of Seattle left in storage during the war and never claimed.
The story is a touching one and shows how individuals made a difference even in difficult times.