Reviews

The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka

rsutton06's review against another edition

3.0

I picked up this title because it is the One Book, One Philadelphia read for 2013. It is about Japanese Picture Brides who immigrated to the U.S. in early 1900s to California. It details their variety of experiences up to the start of WWII. It includes descriptions of the days leading up to the internment of the Japanese. The book had an interesting narrative style I haven't encountered before. It links many narratives, some only a paragraph long which has the effect of telling many stories. While there is little depth to any one narrative, the collective narratives paint a mosaic-like story of the experiences of a people rather than one individual experience. The book is a quick read and would appeal to anyone looking for a fictional account of the Japanese-American immigrant experience. Recommended.

goodem9199's review against another edition

3.0

I thought the writing in this was fantastic, but it was almost written as a book of lists. I think it may have translated better had I read it instead of listened to it. It was oddly done, but her writing makes up for it. I would be interested to see how the text was published, if it is in prose form.

caseyae96's review against another edition

challenging emotional sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

anyajulchen's review against another edition

2.0

Mild

valdez's review against another edition

challenging emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

memphisholli's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? N/A
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

4.5

book_concierge's review against another edition

4.0

In this spare but luminously written novel, Otsuka tells the story of young women who came to America from Japan as “picture brides” in the early 1900s. Through the course of the novel she traces the lives of these immigrants from their journey by boat, to their arrival in San Francisco, their first nights as new wives, their hardships working in unaccustomed ways, their experiences raising children, their relief and pride in building a new life in a new land, and finally to the arrival of war and the loss of what they had built as they were sent with their families to internment camps.

Otsuka won the Pen Faulkner Award for Fiction for this book. She writes mostly in a first person plural voice, using short simple sentences: On the boat we were mostly virgins. We had long black hair and flat wide feet and we were not very tall.
They gave us new names. They called us Helen or Lily.
We gave birth to babies that were so beautiful we could not believe they were ours. We gave birth to babies with colic.
In this way the story is about everyone, or anyone, or no one. Yet it is strongly evocative of time and place, and has an aura of immediacy about it. The reader feels the hopes, sorrows, disappointments, joys, fears, anguish, love, puzzlement, and pride along with these nameless women.

I’ve read other novels that dealt with the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Tallgrass by Sandra Dallas and Jamie Ford’s Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet are two examples. But this novel and Otsuka’s previous work, When the Emperor Was Divine, are special in the way she conveys the thoughts and feelings of the Japanese themselves.

Highly recommended.

siljeblomst's review against another edition

emotional reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No

5.0

abaugher's review against another edition

5.0

This was just as someone described it to me--short but powerful and moving.
The story is about young Japanese women were bought as brides by Japanese men already living in America in the early 1900's.
The point of view is an extraordinary collective one of all the women who came over, so beautifully written one cannot help but feel the strong cultural connection between them all and their shared experiences of coming to a strange land and all their struggles in adjusting to their new husbands, lives, work, and children. And then, World War II happens, and it is never told in the story where exactly they all go when they are uprooted form the homes that they have carved out over the decades.

This is the second book in this story, the first being When The Emperor Was Divine, and seems to be able to be read without needing to read the other one first, although I can imagine that it makes a more comprehensive story about these women and their lives.

jesslolsen's review against another edition

4.0

This was a really good book. It was set out in a unique way using multiple voices at one to demonstrates how different each of their lives were back then.

Although it was a quick read (I read it in 3 days on the commute to and from work) it gave an in-depth look about a time I didn't really know about.

Definitely worth a read.