Snow Falling on Cedars

This was so close to being an incredible, essential book, but some fatal flaws halfway ruined it for me.

First the good: it's a powerful story, primarily about the atrocity that was the US's WW2 internment of Japanese-Americans, and with some important secondary themes like how the war itself damaged people and how men can hurt ourselves by internalising all our problems. Guterson's also a very talented writer, switching easily between a precise clinical style that fits the courtroom elements of the story, and a lyrical style that captures the feel of Puget Sound in winter beautifully.

But there were three flaws that by the end of the book really took a lot away in my eyes:

1. The two Japanese families who have major parts in the story feel like instances of a culture, not sets of living breathing characters. Even the two individuals from those families who are at the centre of the story felt more like roles than people. By halfway through I found myself really wanting to read a Nisei author's telling of the same story. And it's odd because this isn't about trading in nasty stereotypes--the author is clearly very much on their side, but still can't quite get past essentialising their culture.

2. Guterson has a strange obsession with penises, the size thereof, and writing very mechanical sex scenes in which the insertion of peg A into slot B is jarringly unsexy but kicks off massive emotional repercussions. Those scenes felt like they were written by a teenage boy feeling pressure to lose his virginity, and it's all the stranger because he's so good at writing other types of scene.

3. I'm going to hide this one. It's not exactly a suspense spoiler, but I don't want my impression of it to colour other peoples' reactions if you're reading this book with fresh eyes. I hated how at the end the book suddenly becomes Ishmael's redemption story. That character was interesting--I liked him a lot at the start of the book and progressively less as the story unfolded--but ultimately worthwhile for how disturbingly relatable his faults were. But suddenly at the end Guterson made the story not about Kabuo, Hisao or Carl at all, and all about the emotionally-still-a-teenager white boy saving the day by getting over his baggage. I wish I could rewrite it to either not require him to be the one who announces the new evidence, or having his mum coerce or shame him into revealing it.

This was so close to being an incredible, essential book, but some fatal flaws halfway ruined it for me.

First the good: it's a powerful story, primarily about the atrocity that was the US's WW2 internment of Japanese-Americans, and with some important secondary themes like how the war itself damaged people and how men can hurt ourselves by internalising all our problems. Guterson's also a very talented writer, switching easily between a precise clinical style that fits the courtroom elements of the story, and a lyrical style that captures the feel of Puget Sound in winter beautifully.

But there were three flaws that by the end of the book really took a lot away in my eyes:

1. The two Japanese families who have major parts in the story feel like instances of a culture, not sets of living breathing characters. Even the two individuals from those families who are at the centre of the story felt more like roles than people. By halfway through I found myself really wanting to read a Nisei author's telling of the same story. And it's odd because this isn't about trading in nasty stereotypes--the author is clearly very much on their side, but still can't quite get past essentialising their culture.

2. Guterson has a strange obsession with penises, the size thereof, and writing very mechanical sex scenes in which the insertion of peg A into slot B is jarringly unsexy but kicks off massive emotional repercussions. Those scenes felt like they were written by a teenage boy feeling pressure to lose his virginity, and it's all the stranger because he's so good at writing other types of scene.

3. I'm going to hide this one. It's not exactly a suspense spoiler, but I don't want my impression of it to colour other peoples' reactions if you're reading this book with fresh eyes. I hated how at the end the book suddenly becomes Ishmael's redemption story. That character was interesting--I liked him a lot at the start of the book and progressively less as the story unfolded--but ultimately worthwhile for how disturbingly relatable his faults were. But suddenly at the end Guterson made the story not about Kabuo, Hisao or Carl at all, and all about the emotionally-still-a-teenager white boy saving the day by getting over his baggage. I wish I could rewrite it to either not require him to be the one who announces the new evidence, or having his mum coerce or shame him into revealing it.

This was so close to being an incredible, essential book, but some fatal flaws halfway ruined it for me.

First the good: it's a powerful story, primarily about the atrocity that was the US's WW2 internment of Japanese-Americans, and with some important secondary themes like how the war itself damaged people and how men can hurt ourselves by internalising all our problems. Guterson's also a very talented writer, switching easily between a precise clinical style that fits the courtroom elements of the story, and a lyrical style that captures the feel of Puget Sound in winter beautifully.

But there were three flaws that by the end of the book really took a lot away in my eyes:

1. The two Japanese families who have major parts in the story feel like instances of a culture, not sets of living breathing characters. Even the two individuals from those families who are at the centre of the story felt more like roles than people. By halfway through I found myself really wanting to read a Nisei author's telling of the same story. And it's odd because this isn't about trading in nasty stereotypes--the author is clearly very much on their side, but still can't quite get past essentialising their culture.

2. Guterson has a strange obsession with penises, the size thereof, and writing very mechanical sex scenes in which the insertion of peg A into slot B is jarringly unsexy but kicks off massive emotional repercussions. Those scenes felt like they were written by a teenage boy feeling pressure to lose his virginity, and it's all the stranger because he's so good at writing other types of scene.

3. I'm going to hide this one. It's not exactly a suspense spoiler, but I don't want my impression of it to colour other peoples' reactions if you're reading this book with fresh eyes. I hated how at the end the book suddenly becomes Ishmael's redemption story. That character was interesting--I liked him a lot at the start of the book and progressively less as the story unfolded--but ultimately worthwhile for how disturbingly relatable his faults were. But suddenly at the end Guterson made the story not about Kabuo, Hisao or Carl at all, and all about the emotionally-still-a-teenager white boy saving the day by getting over his baggage. I wish I could rewrite it to either not require him to be the one who announces the new evidence, or having his mum coerce or shame him into revealing it.

World War II is the backdrop for many a fascinating story, and this is one of them. David Guterson sets his story on a fictional island in Puget Sound and introduces us to a small community where the economy depends mostly on fishing and strawberry farming. The present, urgent story centers around a murder trial, in which Kabuo Miyamoto is accused of killing Carl Heine. It is 1954.

As the trial progresses, the author tells us the family stories of some of the island's residents, especially Kabuo's and Hatsue Imada's. Their families had been respected farmers on San Piedro Island for many years before the Pearl Harbor attack. After that, they were suddenly under the most horrible suspicions. First, policemen visited the homes of every family of Japanese ancestry and arrested men for having "weapons" (tools that all farmers and fishermen on the island had, if they'd all been searched), and not long after, their families were deported to Manzanar. Kabuo and Hatsue were married in Manzanar, and Kabuo joins the US Army shortly afterwards.

One of the reporters covering the story of this trial is Ishmael Chambers, who remembers both Kabuo and Hatsue from school. In fact, Ishmael has always been in love with Hatsue and has his own world of issues. And of course there is Carl Heine's story, and his family's past dealings with Kabuo's father is also important to the plot. (By the way, Hatsue, Kabuo, Ishmael, and Carl are contemporaries, all born in the United States.)

Racial prejudice was always present in this small community, but the war brought it to the fore, and now, ten years later, an American man, a WWII veteran, is once again singled out without reason. Kabuo and his family are faced with another crisis simply because of their ancestry.

It's a riveting story.