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A review by dj_hillier
Spring Snow by Yukio Mishima
3.0
This reminded me of another Japanese book set at the end of the Meiji period, "And Then" by Natsume Soseki. Both novels feature a young, handsome, narrator, who is inclined to laziness, vanity and selfishness. Both feature a love triangle of sorts. Both concern the clash between traditional and modern Japan.
That is where the differences end. Soseki´s prose is sparse and elegant, the descriptions of setting and nature not overwhelming the narrtative momentum. Mishima (and this is a criticism of all of his work) often gets too bogged down in overly metaphorical descriptions of landscapes, which slows the novel down significantly. Whilst thematically these descriptions are often relevant, for me they come far too regularly to be truly effective. Because Soseki often kept it quite spare, only occasionally lapsing into figurative description, it was therefore all the more powerful when it did happen, because the reader wasn´t being exposed to it every page or so.
That is not to say that this novel doesn´t contain moments of brilliance, and a truly memorable storyline. It does. It´s just that for some reason, I have never been able to shake the opinion that Mishima the man is more interesting than Mishima the author. And nothing that I´ve read so far has managed to totally convince me otherwise.
That is where the differences end. Soseki´s prose is sparse and elegant, the descriptions of setting and nature not overwhelming the narrtative momentum. Mishima (and this is a criticism of all of his work) often gets too bogged down in overly metaphorical descriptions of landscapes, which slows the novel down significantly. Whilst thematically these descriptions are often relevant, for me they come far too regularly to be truly effective. Because Soseki often kept it quite spare, only occasionally lapsing into figurative description, it was therefore all the more powerful when it did happen, because the reader wasn´t being exposed to it every page or so.
That is not to say that this novel doesn´t contain moments of brilliance, and a truly memorable storyline. It does. It´s just that for some reason, I have never been able to shake the opinion that Mishima the man is more interesting than Mishima the author. And nothing that I´ve read so far has managed to totally convince me otherwise.