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4.12 AVERAGE
4.12 AVERAGE
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
The writing style was lovely - evocative language that perfectly conjured up images. Overall however I found the work to be a bit ponderous and overlong for its content.
emotional
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
emotional
medium-paced
‘On a mountain above the clouds once lived a man who had been the gardener of the Emperor of Japan.’
The story opens in the 1980s when Teoh Yun Ling, recently retired as a judge from the Supreme Court in Kuala Lumpur, returns to the Cameron Highlands in Malaysia.
Teoh Yun Ling and her older sister Teoh Yun Hong were imprisoned in an internment camp by the Japanese during World War II. Teoh Yun Hong was forced to become a ‘comfort woman’ for the Japanese soldiers. And, as the war was ending, the Japanese destroyed the camp. Teoh Yun Ling was the only survivor.
Before the war, the sisters and their parents had visited Japan. After seeing the formal gardens in Kyoto, Teoh Yun Hong wanted to build a Japanese garden of her own. As a memorial to her sister, Teoh Yun Ling, tried to commission Nakamura Aritomo to design it. In the early 1950s, Nakamura Aritomo, once a gardener to the Japanese Emperor, was designing his own garden, Yugiri, in the Cameron Highlands. Nakamura Aritomo refused to design the garden but offered to teach Teoh Yun Ling so she could design it herself. Teoh Yun Ling, scarred by her own internment, accepts the offer of an apprenticeship, despite her loathing of the Japanese.
Now, in the 1980s, recently retired and facing medical issues, Teoh Yun Ling has returned to the Cameron Highlands to try to make sense of her life and experiences and write her memoir while she still can. While World War II provides the backdrop to this novel, most of the story unfolds during Teoh Yun Ling’s apprenticeship to Nakamura Aritomo during several months during the Malayan Emergency, and in the present where she is approached by a Japanese historian, Yoshikawa Tatsuji, seeking information about Nakamura Aritomo’s life and work.
There are so many contradictions, contrasts and strands to this story. There is also a mystery surrounding Nakamura Aritomo which only becomes (relatively) clear towards the end of the novel. It is possible that Teoh Yun Ling holds the key.
I entered this story and became caught up in the contrast between beauty and brutality. I wished that Teoh Yun Ling could find the information she sought and that I could see for myself the beauty represented in Yuguri and hoped that Teoh Yun Ling had time to rehabilitate it. And I wondered what happened to Nakamura Aritomo.
I finished this novel, recognising that ambiguities remain, that while beauty may ameliorate some aspects of brutality, the two co-exist in an uneasy harmony. One cannot negate the other.
This was Tan Twan Eng’s second novel, and the third of his I have read. While each novel is wonderful, this is my current favourite.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
A clever interplay of symbols from various cultures creates a patchwork quilt of myths, philosophies and arts. Yet this is not a book of abstraction but one of sometimes brutal realities.
The Garden of Evening Mists is a story of healing and memory and forgetting, centering on the Japanese occupation of Malaya. The barbarity of war is contrasted against the beauty of art; the cruelty of the Japanese soldiers set against the Japanese aesthetic sensibilities for intricate gardens and beautiful woodblock prints. These two aspects might seem antithetical, but The Garden of Evening Mists explores how creativity and destruction can exist side by side, often in the most surprising or uncomfortable ways.
Perhaps the most difficult line Tan Twan Eng treads is trying to show the human side to individual Japanese characters while also questioning their culpability in the mass rapes and killings perpetrated by their nation in countries like Malaysia - actions that hold much greater significance for Asia than the Holocaust.
This is a novel that poses many questions, but the one that struck me as most poignant is whether it is better to remove all trace of colonisers - whether British or Japanese - from the cultural landscape as a way to heal a country, or if it is ultimately more beneficial to work the good and the bad influences into the fabric of a nation's history and art.
The Garden of Evening Mists is a story of healing and memory and forgetting, centering on the Japanese occupation of Malaya. The barbarity of war is contrasted against the beauty of art; the cruelty of the Japanese soldiers set against the Japanese aesthetic sensibilities for intricate gardens and beautiful woodblock prints. These two aspects might seem antithetical, but The Garden of Evening Mists explores how creativity and destruction can exist side by side, often in the most surprising or uncomfortable ways.
Perhaps the most difficult line Tan Twan Eng treads is trying to show the human side to individual Japanese characters while also questioning their culpability in the mass rapes and killings perpetrated by their nation in countries like Malaysia - actions that hold much greater significance for Asia than the Holocaust.
This is a novel that poses many questions, but the one that struck me as most poignant is whether it is better to remove all trace of colonisers - whether British or Japanese - from the cultural landscape as a way to heal a country, or if it is ultimately more beneficial to work the good and the bad influences into the fabric of a nation's history and art.
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
adventurous
challenging
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes