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From Amazon.com
This is the kind of book where you can smell and hear and see the fictional world the writer has created, so palpably does the atmosphere come through. Set on an island in the straits north of Puget Sound, in Washington, where everyone is either a fisherman or a berry farmer, the story is nominally about a murder trial. But since it's set in the 1950s, lingering memories of World War II, internment camps and racism helps fuel suspicion of a Japanese-American fisherman, a lifelong resident of the islands. It's a great story, but the primary pleasure of the book is Guterson's renderings of the people and the place.
From Publishers Weekly
First-novelist Guterson presents a multilayered courtroom drama set in the aftermath of the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Vivid and Beautiful,
By
This review is from: Snow Falling on Cedars: A Novel (Paperback)
The year is 1954 and Kabuo Miyamoto a Japanese American fisherman is standing trial for murder in small town in Puget Sound Washington. Up until World War II, his family was growing strawberries and making payments towards owning the land they lived and worked on. With the onset so the war left for the land, they were sent away to a Japanese internment camp. After the war ended they came back to Puget Sound only to find the land that they had struggled for was sold.
The narrator of the story was the journalist covering the trial, Ishmael Chambers. As a child, he played with and later fell in love with Hatsue. When she was sent to the Japanese internment camp with her family, she sent Ishmael a "Dear John" letter. When she returned to Puget Sound, she was married to Kabuo Miyamoto. Ishmael never stopped loving Hatsue and may be the only one to be able to uncover the truth and set Kabuo free. Will he let his feelings get in the way of doing the right thing? This is a book of love, friendship, betrayal, honor, tradition, and racism. David's Guterson's characters ring true to me. His writing flows beautifully as he peels away the layers of the town and it's inhabitants. This is a fast reading book that I didn't want to put down. I highly recommend it!
4.0 out of 5 stars
Impressive,
This review is from: Snow Falling on Cedars: A Novel (Paperback)
A beautifully written and crafted book. Through the story of a Japanese man on trial for the murder of a fisherman, Guterson brings to life the people of a remote island community, their histories, relations, loves and hatreds. In the process, he forces the reader to think about what defines humanity. The first time I started reading this I didn't get past the first several pages. Several years later, I tried again and was very glad I pressed on. By the time I was a third of the way through, I was hooked and impressed.
4.0 out of 5 stars
"The trick was to live here without hating yourself...",
By EriKa "E" (Iceland) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Snow Falling on Cedars: A Novel (Paperback)
Many years passed between my viewing the film version of Snow Falling on Cedars and finally reading the book one morning when I was at a friend's house, awake many hours before she was. I was impressed by the stunning, detailed descriptions of landscapes, people (physically and mentally), and I appreciated the detailed way the story unfolded. Comparing the book to the film (which is always a bad idea), I can say that I enjoyed both. The book offers eloquent descriptions of characters, so you understand them with greater depth. Particularly important are the elegant portrayals of Kabuo, Hatsue, and Ishmael, and the narrative relies on flashback sequences to convey the characters' relationships to each other and to reveal the history of why each character is how he or she is. In the film, for example, Ishmael's bitterness is not fully developed, and Kabuo's character is not fleshed out well either. It was, for example, impossible for the movie to convey Kabuo's feelings as expressed in the book, e.g. "He had meant to project to the jurors his innocence, he's wanted them to see that his spirit was haunted," and, "It had seemed to Kabuo that his detachment from this world was somehow self-explanatory." Although the manner in which both Kabuo and Ishmael had been affected by the war was touched on in the film, the book delved deeply into these matters. The book helps bring the scenery and the people to life far more than the movie "incarnation" possibly could. That much is to be expected.
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