~ Snow on Falling Cedars. By David Guterson ~
It is surprising just how difficult it can be to review a book that one has liked immensely.
The plot of this novel revolves around a trial in 1954 of Kabuo Miyamoto, a second generation Japanese American man, accused of murdering a fellow gill-netting fisherman, Carl Heine. Conducted over the three days of the trial, the novel nevertheless spans back at least two generations, providing the back stories of the key protagonists. Although the novel has a suspenseful plot of the unfolding trial and whether Kabuo will be found guilty, it is actually a novel all about character development. Guterson brings each character to life with sure, deft brush strokes and a background story for each which grabs the reader’s fascination and sympathy. It is as if Guteson is encouraging his readers to regard every person not as just as they stand in the here and now, but to take on board that they are a product of their family, their family’s history and suffering and endurance, and that each person is both noble and flawed simultaneously. It is writing which is beautifully nuanced and layered, rich and penetrating, masterful and measured.
The pace of the novel is deceptively slow – the author takes his time to develop each critical point in the storyline, in parallel to how both prosecutor and defense attorneys take their time to unpack their questioning and make their impactful points. Guterson provides detailed background information on all the associated topics, but never losing the thread or drifting from the tight plot construction. Ultimately, it is about the systemic injustice done to Japanese who settled in America, who were discriminated against (both by the state, the law, and the people they live among), treated with suspicion which went hand in hand with respect that they earned for being quiet and hardworking, then incarcerated after the bombing of Pearl Habour, and whose men fought and died for America and still were not trusted to be patriots, still regarded as Japs and the Other.
San Piedro is a small place, where all the families work hard, know each other well, and to some extent, have to live together in some form of harmony, feuds and enmities not withstanding. The Imada family is notable with its five daughters; the most beautiful and eldest, Hatsue, is a girl of both elegance of spirit and bearing. She is loved by Ishmael Chambers, who runs the newspaper, taking over from his upright, principled, highly regarded father. But Hatsue Imada, despite a beautiful childhood love affair with Ishmael, knows she does not love him as she should, and that she has been carried away by the magic of the cedar tree within which they shelter and spend time as teenagers, and learn about each other. When all the Japanese on San Piedro are taken away, Hatsue resolves to end the relationship, but Ishmael who is enlisted for the war, continues to carry a flame for her, even after it becomes clear it is unreciprocated. In the Japanese internment camp Hatsue meets Kabuo, whom she allows herself to love.
However, Kabuo also goes off to war, and
Hatsue found that she was married to a war veteran and this was the crucial fact of her marriage; the war had elicited in him a persistent guilt that lay over his soul like a shadow. For her this meant loving him in a manner she hadn’t anticipate before he’d left for the war. There was nothing of charity in it and she did not step lightly around his heart or indulge his sorrow or his whims. Instead she brought herself to his sorrows completely, not to console him but to give him time to become himself again. Without regrets she honored the obligation she felt to him and was happy to efface herself […] she took when she could a piece of his sorrow and stored it for him in her own heart.
p316
It is not only Kabuo who returned changed; Ishmael similarly is unable to feel as he once did, regarding everything with a new coolness and detachment, going through the motions of life, without actually living or wanting to live. Carl Heine too, who is also a war veteran, carries his own darkness and his own silence.
Susan Marie knew within three months of marrying Carl that she’d made an excellent choice. In his silent grave veteran’s way he was dependable and gentle. […] Carl had told her more than once – he’d repeated it just the other day – how since the war he couldn’t speak. Even his old friend were included in this, so that now Carl was a lonely man who understood land and work, boat and sea, his own hands, better than his mouth and heart. […] He was a man who needed plenty of space, a vast terrain in which to operate. […] Carl needed room, far more room than his boat could offer, and anyway in order to put the war behind him – the Canton going down, men drowning while he watched – he would have to leave his boat for good and grow strawberries like his father. She knew this was the only way for her husband to grow sound; it was what made her willing, ultimately, to follow hm out to Island Centre.
p259-261
The wonderful unfolding of Carl and Susan Marie’s relationship draws the reader in powerfully, making one wish ardently Carl can go out to his strawberry fields, and heal, and live a full happy life with his beautiful, sensual wife and three children, and work hard and come home to them each day, forever. However, because Kabuo’s story and character are no less compelling, the reader is not then visited with the wish that he or anyone else be punished for Carl’s life being cut short untimely. It is not a writing which stirs up feelings of vengefulness or vindictiveness; it is, for all its grand scope and sweep, a gentle writing, which induces regret and sorrow while simultaneously thrilling to the beautiful and majesty of the same damaged humans and their lives.
It is the quality of writing which makes this novel. It is luminous and lyrical, spinning out the story at a pace of its own setting, as measured and balanced and self-disciplined as the key characters are in this novel. They feel passionately and yet delicately, they are intense but understated, their feelings run deep and yet quiet, and they are stoical and enduring. There are no villains here; it is a novel that is tragic because each character is remarkable, and yet each has to hurt others and be hurt. It is a world Guterson creates where its characters understand the seemingly now old-fashioned concept of honor, and try to live by its creed, and how that concept surprisingly holds remarkably consistent even when crossing cultures.
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