548 reviews for:

Spring Snow

Yukio Mishima

4.04 AVERAGE


really well written but boring book. the dull beauty helped me cope with the crushing Laker loss in game 6 against the Nuggets. whats going to happen in game 7? can I force myself to care about any other team in the playoffs?
emotional reflective slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes
challenging emotional reflective sad slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Mishima is an author who revels in the importance of the unimportant. The seemingly casual remarks that get us all through the day are parsed and broken to a depth of meaning that is unrecognizable from where it began. It seems, oftentimes, excessive.

And yet, don't we all do this? How many pithy, forgettable remarks do we remember? How many times has a single, random phrase defined another person for us in their entirety? How often have we unfairly assumed that we knew all there was to know about a person based on their casual conversation?

The walls are up high and connections are few and far between for Mishima's noble youths. What he reveals is that an absence of formal connection and a paucity of opportunities for deep interaction don't mean that the participants don't feel deeply. Perhaps they feel wrongly, immaturely, or recklessly, but it's not a lack of depth that's the issue.

This is a highly verbose novel about silence, the inability to interrogate one's self and to communicate with others. It's all orbit and no contact. And like the inhuman beauty of its protagonists, the inhuman beauty of the text is resonant in a way that's hard to explain. As a reader, I found myself much in the same position as these characters: amazed and confused. It's a wonder to behold how much Mishima does with so little action.
reflective sad tense slow-paced
emotional reflective slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

Beautifully written. It's as if the story is told from a plane of aesthetic purity than from the reality in which the story takes place. We seldom see things for what they are, and when we do its to enhance the story in that poetic existence.

I cannot recommend this enough.

Review pending.
emotional reflective sad medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes