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.