- Hardcover: 368 pages
- Publisher: Nan A. Talese (Jan 22 2008)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0385515715
- ISBN-13: 978-0385515719
- Product Dimensions: 22 x 15.6 x 4.2 cm
- Shipping Weight: 522 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #394,049 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Schwartz bases his finely wrought fourth novel on the life of Empress Michiko of Japan, the first commoner to marry into the Japanese imperial family. Haruko Tsuneyasu grows up in postwar rural Japan and studies at Sacred Heart University, where she excels—particularly and fatefully—at tennis, which provides her entrée to the crown prince, whom she handily beats in an exhibition match. After more meetings on and off the court, the prince asks Haruko to marry him. Persuaded by their mutual attraction and by assurances that the break with tradition will usher in a modern era, Haruko ultimately agrees, against her father's wishes, to become the first commoner turned royal. But, as her father had feared, her freedom and ambition suffer under the stifling rituals of court life. Eventually, Haruko succumbs to the inescapable judgment of the empress and her entourage, falling mute after the birth of her son, Yasuhito. Though the narrative loses some of its life after Haruko marries—perhaps mirroring Haruko's experience within the palace walls—urgency returns after Haruko chooses a wife for Yasuhito; the marriage tests Haruko's dedication to the crown. Schwartz (Reservation Road) pulls off a grand feat in giving readers a moving dramatization of a cloistered world.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
Book Sense National Bestseller!
“Out of this heart-wrenching history, Schwartz has woven a delicate, elegiac tale, intensely moving and utterly convincing.
He has imaginatively reconstructed the private story while remaining largely true to the scant details that have been reported to the public. Schwartz has written about Japan before and he has established himself as a master of mood in more recent fiction, that like The Commoner is fused with terrible sadness.
Schwartz has clearly done extensive research into the lives of the empress and crown princess and seems, as well, to have had extraordinary access to the Imperial Household Agency. He vividly evokes the secrets and ceremonies of the imperial palace. It’s magical to have the curtain imaginatively lifted on these mysteries.”
–New York Times Book Review
“Schwartz has written a mesmerizing novel full of tenderness and compassion, one that convincingly invests the Japanese empress’s voice with all the nuance it demands.”
–Washington Post
“[An] impressively imagined and often exquisite act of ventriloquism….Though he calls his main character Haruko Endo, and changes a few names and details here and there, Schwartz recreates the [Japanese empress'] story, from within, with such fidelity and in such detail that it becomes hard to tell how much of his tale is fiction, how much thinly disguised fact…. As in a Japanese room, nothing is out of place and no detail is accidental in this book…. One of Schwartz's achievements is to take us into corridors and rituals that have almost never been revealed to the public. Particularly affecting is his account of the current emperor, as seen through the eyes of his warmhearted young companion…. Throughout the novel, indeed, Schwartz gives faces and convincingly nuanced voices to people we otherwise know only as mutes and distant silhouettes-to such an extent that it's hard not to think that he must have had an inside source.”
-The New York Review of Books
"A subtle, finely wrought fiction that evokes Jane Austen.... Schwartz has followed up his highly praised novel Reservation Road with a tour de force; the creation of a wholly convincing Japanese heroine by a male American writer reflects the triumph of imagination over experience."
–San Jose Mercury News
"[Schwartz] finds the heartbreak, the wistfulness and the poignancy within this world, demonstrating how easy it is to be trapped.... The monarchy depicted in The Commoner is rife with secrets and the Japanese notion of saving face, which makes the ending something of a contradiction. It both breaks with tradition and upholds it, a devastating throwback to the country's past and a move toward something resembling modernity."
–The Philidelphia Inquirer
"Life inside the walls of Japan's Imperial Palace has not been kind to the commoners who've married there. [And] an American taking on a fictional memoir about a living Japanese empress is a gutsy move, but Schwartz makes it work. He pulls the reader into a vibrant world, rooms swimming with color but also minds battling the conflict between emotion and expectation. Haruko's voice is real [and] as she struggles to address the challenges that arise from that pivotal decision to join the royal family, she must come to terms with not just who she is but the parts of her that are important to keep. So while the external details of life in the palace remain stunning, it's Schwartz's grasp of the internal struggle that resonates after the last page is turned."
–Denver Post
"Schwartz pulls off a grand feat in giving readers a moving dramatization of a cloistered world."
–Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"John Burnham Schwartz leaps with prodigious skill... His book will inevitably be compared with Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha, but Mr. Schwartz's work is more delicate and graceful.... Through painstaking research and a humane sensibility, Mr. Schwartz has opened a window on [a] strange, cloistered world."
–Brooke Allen, The Wall Street Journal
"John Burnham Schwartz is a keen observer of Japan–his 1989 debut, Bicycle Days, nicely captured the travails of a foreigner desperate to blend in. He is also good at agony–Reservation Road, his second novel, was an unblinking meditation on emotional pain in the aftermath of a child's death.
The Commoner entwines the two strands of Schwartz's expertise. Fascinated and appalled by the resonating stories of Michiko and Masako, he has written a novel that attempts to give these silenced women their voices back.
It's a bold, even a presumptuous exercise–these women are still alive, after all. But for anyone who's ever sighed with regret over Masako's fate, or gazed at the forbidding walls of the Imperial Palace in central Tokyo, it's one that's hard to resist.
Schwartz handles the physical details effortlessly, but his silken style lends itself best to the creation of internal life from whole cloth. You can sternly remind yourself every few pages that this is fiction, or you can relax and enjoy the fantasy that you are privy to two of the most private public lives in the world."
–Los Angeles Times
"A bittersweet story narrated by Haruko Endo, a brewer's daughter who marries into Japan's cloistered Imperial Family, Burnham Schwartz's fourth novel expertly evokes the sense of powerlessness and isolation that mark both royal life and bad marriages. Inspired, according to the author, by the emotional struggles of Japan's fragile Empress, the former Michiko Shoda, and of her daughter-in-law Crown Princess Masako, a Harvard graduate defined in court circles by her inability to produce an heir, The Commoner is an artful meditation on the limits of love and duty. No happy endings here, but with a spare prose style that perfectly mirrors its setting, this novel will thrill readers who crave literary romance."
–People
"This story is as ethereal and sensual as a Japanese watercolor, as magical and dark as a fairy tale."
–Booklist
"[The Commoner] paints a carefully researched, evocative of picture of a country that emerged from World War II with everything blown apart but its moat-protected heart.... Schwartz opens a gilded window into a seldom-seen world and the traditions that have sustained a monarchy through centuries, only to threaten the young lives needed to carry it into the future."
–USA Today
“Brave is the novelist who casts a narrative in a voice that traverses gender and a cultural divide. John Burnham Schwartz makes the gambit pay off, impressively, in The Commoner, a masterfully researched exegesis that pulls back the curtain on the post-war Japanese Chrysanthemum Throne…. Schwartz does a superb job of conveying the painful sense of isolation that comes from living in a cloistered world where servants hover and prescribed rituals and schedules are etched in stone…. [The Commoner] casts a graceful and stylish light on lifestyles that are royal in title and little else.”
–St. Louis Post-Dispatch
"A mature, polished Schwartz returns to the Japan of his successful first novel, Bicycle Days, in The Commoner.... [His] beautifully wrought prose enhances the dramatic effect in portraying the anachronistic, cloistered imperial prison."
–Rocky Mountain News
"The beauty of the story, besides the meticulous research, is the human dimension.... Schwartz has written a powerful, instructive book about the pervasive effects that a strict code of rigid conformity and silence can have on two women once destined for an entirely different fate than the one they now live."
–Tampa Tribune
"Schwartz's tale of how Haruko's life unfolds is a fascinating look inside the Japanese monarchy, and a moving look at how one woman loses her life– not her physical being, but who she is.... Schwartz keenly portrays Haruko's bleak emotions–the loneliness, the bitter sadness, the resignation to her fate–with a grace and depth that befits a princess."
–Wichita Eagle
“A writer of great skill, Schwartz has made the imperial family entirely believable, especially Haruko, the future empress.... Schwartz has to be meticulous with the traditions and customs and historical references. He has to make them believable. And the has to weave his fiction around all that. A difficult task, but Schwartz has been able to produce a wonderful novel that reveals a world with roots in reality."
–The Toronto Globe and Mail
"John Burnham Schwartz's fourth novel is told with elegance and historical accuracy.... Woven with language that is both touching and telling, the myth-like tale of Haruko's life comes full circle in a very epic sense.... Ultimately, Schwartz's novel is a graceful narrative flight circumscribing the internal struggles faced by women from all cultures whose loyalty, duty and honor to oneself and one's legacy are more important than the oldest traditions, however noble or common they may be."
–Bookslut.com
"The author effortlessly speaks through the eyes of a female born and raised on foreign soil. He enters her mind and her heart, and he shares them with us most intimately. And like any story of oppression, the reader closes the book with a mixture of satisfaction and sympathy."
–BookReporter.com
"As an author who has aimed for a clean, transparent style throughout his career, Schwartz finds his perfect subject in this tale of Japanese royalty. Fans of Memoirs of a Geisha and royal gossip will savor it.... Ultimately, the ...
“Out of this heart-wrenching history, Schwartz has woven a delicate, elegiac tale, intensely moving and utterly convincing.
He has imaginatively reconstructed the private story while remaining largely true to the scant details that have been reported to the public. Schwartz has written about Japan before and he has established himself as a master of mood in more recent fiction, that like The Commoner is fused with terrible sadness.
Schwartz has clearly done extensive research into the lives of the empress and crown princess and seems, as well, to have had extraordinary access to the Imperial Household Agency. He vividly evokes the secrets and ceremonies of the imperial palace. It’s magical to have the curtain imaginatively lifted on these mysteries.”
–New York Times Book Review
“Schwartz has written a mesmerizing novel full of tenderness and compassion, one that convincingly invests the Japanese empress’s voice with all the nuance it demands.”
–Washington Post
“[An] impressively imagined and often exquisite act of ventriloquism….Though he calls his main character Haruko Endo, and changes a few names and details here and there, Schwartz recreates the [Japanese empress'] story, from within, with such fidelity and in such detail that it becomes hard to tell how much of his tale is fiction, how much thinly disguised fact…. As in a Japanese room, nothing is out of place and no detail is accidental in this book…. One of Schwartz's achievements is to take us into corridors and rituals that have almost never been revealed to the public. Particularly affecting is his account of the current emperor, as seen through the eyes of his warmhearted young companion…. Throughout the novel, indeed, Schwartz gives faces and convincingly nuanced voices to people we otherwise know only as mutes and distant silhouettes-to such an extent that it's hard not to think that he must have had an inside source.”
-The New York Review of Books
"A subtle, finely wrought fiction that evokes Jane Austen.... Schwartz has followed up his highly praised novel Reservation Road with a tour de force; the creation of a wholly convincing Japanese heroine by a male American writer reflects the triumph of imagination over experience."
–San Jose Mercury News
"[Schwartz] finds the heartbreak, the wistfulness and the poignancy within this world, demonstrating how easy it is to be trapped.... The monarchy depicted in The Commoner is rife with secrets and the Japanese notion of saving face, which makes the ending something of a contradiction. It both breaks with tradition and upholds it, a devastating throwback to the country's past and a move toward something resembling modernity."
–The Philidelphia Inquirer
"Life inside the walls of Japan's Imperial Palace has not been kind to the commoners who've married there. [And] an American taking on a fictional memoir about a living Japanese empress is a gutsy move, but Schwartz makes it work. He pulls the reader into a vibrant world, rooms swimming with color but also minds battling the conflict between emotion and expectation. Haruko's voice is real [and] as she struggles to address the challenges that arise from that pivotal decision to join the royal family, she must come to terms with not just who she is but the parts of her that are important to keep. So while the external details of life in the palace remain stunning, it's Schwartz's grasp of the internal struggle that resonates after the last page is turned."
–Denver Post
"Schwartz pulls off a grand feat in giving readers a moving dramatization of a cloistered world."
–Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"John Burnham Schwartz leaps with prodigious skill... His book will inevitably be compared with Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha, but Mr. Schwartz's work is more delicate and graceful.... Through painstaking research and a humane sensibility, Mr. Schwartz has opened a window on [a] strange, cloistered world."
–Brooke Allen, The Wall Street Journal
"John Burnham Schwartz is a keen observer of Japan–his 1989 debut, Bicycle Days, nicely captured the travails of a foreigner desperate to blend in. He is also good at agony–Reservation Road, his second novel, was an unblinking meditation on emotional pain in the aftermath of a child's death.
The Commoner entwines the two strands of Schwartz's expertise. Fascinated and appalled by the resonating stories of Michiko and Masako, he has written a novel that attempts to give these silenced women their voices back.
It's a bold, even a presumptuous exercise–these women are still alive, after all. But for anyone who's ever sighed with regret over Masako's fate, or gazed at the forbidding walls of the Imperial Palace in central Tokyo, it's one that's hard to resist.
Schwartz handles the physical details effortlessly, but his silken style lends itself best to the creation of internal life from whole cloth. You can sternly remind yourself every few pages that this is fiction, or you can relax and enjoy the fantasy that you are privy to two of the most private public lives in the world."
–Los Angeles Times
"A bittersweet story narrated by Haruko Endo, a brewer's daughter who marries into Japan's cloistered Imperial Family, Burnham Schwartz's fourth novel expertly evokes the sense of powerlessness and isolation that mark both royal life and bad marriages. Inspired, according to the author, by the emotional struggles of Japan's fragile Empress, the former Michiko Shoda, and of her daughter-in-law Crown Princess Masako, a Harvard graduate defined in court circles by her inability to produce an heir, The Commoner is an artful meditation on the limits of love and duty. No happy endings here, but with a spare prose style that perfectly mirrors its setting, this novel will thrill readers who crave literary romance."
–People
"This story is as ethereal and sensual as a Japanese watercolor, as magical and dark as a fairy tale."
–Booklist
"[The Commoner] paints a carefully researched, evocative of picture of a country that emerged from World War II with everything blown apart but its moat-protected heart.... Schwartz opens a gilded window into a seldom-seen world and the traditions that have sustained a monarchy through centuries, only to threaten the young lives needed to carry it into the future."
–USA Today
“Brave is the novelist who casts a narrative in a voice that traverses gender and a cultural divide. John Burnham Schwartz makes the gambit pay off, impressively, in The Commoner, a masterfully researched exegesis that pulls back the curtain on the post-war Japanese Chrysanthemum Throne…. Schwartz does a superb job of conveying the painful sense of isolation that comes from living in a cloistered world where servants hover and prescribed rituals and schedules are etched in stone…. [The Commoner] casts a graceful and stylish light on lifestyles that are royal in title and little else.”
–St. Louis Post-Dispatch
"A mature, polished Schwartz returns to the Japan of his successful first novel, Bicycle Days, in The Commoner.... [His] beautifully wrought prose enhances the dramatic effect in portraying the anachronistic, cloistered imperial prison."
–Rocky Mountain News
"The beauty of the story, besides the meticulous research, is the human dimension.... Schwartz has written a powerful, instructive book about the pervasive effects that a strict code of rigid conformity and silence can have on two women once destined for an entirely different fate than the one they now live."
–Tampa Tribune
"Schwartz's tale of how Haruko's life unfolds is a fascinating look inside the Japanese monarchy, and a moving look at how one woman loses her life– not her physical being, but who she is.... Schwartz keenly portrays Haruko's bleak emotions–the loneliness, the bitter sadness, the resignation to her fate–with a grace and depth that befits a princess."
–Wichita Eagle
“A writer of great skill, Schwartz has made the imperial family entirely believable, especially Haruko, the future empress.... Schwartz has to be meticulous with the traditions and customs and historical references. He has to make them believable. And the has to weave his fiction around all that. A difficult task, but Schwartz has been able to produce a wonderful novel that reveals a world with roots in reality."
–The Toronto Globe and Mail
"John Burnham Schwartz's fourth novel is told with elegance and historical accuracy.... Woven with language that is both touching and telling, the myth-like tale of Haruko's life comes full circle in a very epic sense.... Ultimately, Schwartz's novel is a graceful narrative flight circumscribing the internal struggles faced by women from all cultures whose loyalty, duty and honor to oneself and one's legacy are more important than the oldest traditions, however noble or common they may be."
–Bookslut.com
"The author effortlessly speaks through the eyes of a female born and raised on foreign soil. He enters her mind and her heart, and he shares them with us most intimately. And like any story of oppression, the reader closes the book with a mixture of satisfaction and sympathy."
–BookReporter.com
"As an author who has aimed for a clean, transparent style throughout his career, Schwartz finds his perfect subject in this tale of Japanese royalty. Fans of Memoirs of a Geisha and royal gossip will savor it.... Ultimately, the ...
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Most helpful customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
From Freedom to Subjugation in a Luxurious Setting,
By Donald Mitchell "Jesus Loves You!" (Thanks for Providing My Reviews over 112,000 Helpful Votes Globally) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER) (#1 HALL OF FAME)
This review is from: The Commoner: A Novel (Hardcover)
If you like prince and princess stories, this one will probably appeal to you.In all of the fairy tales about prince and princesses, the authors wisely end the story after they fall in love or marry by saying some version of "and they lived happily ever after." But do princes and princesses really live happily after marriage? The harshly publicized marriage between Prince Charles and Princess Diana suggests that it's not inevitable that it all works out. Why? Royal persons of all kinds are figureheads subject to lots of arbitrary rules and restraints that would drive a normal person crazy. If the person married isn't from that background, can depression be avoided? In The Commoner John Burnham Schwartz bases his fictional story on the public events in the lives of the Japanese Imperial family. Using good imagination, he describes what it might have been like to leave a carefree life to become the consort of the Crown Prince. His narrator is Haruko, the bride of the prince. You'll feel like you are reading about a slave's life in places. Many people will find this book evoking tears of sadness or regret on Haruko's behalf. The book's main strength is making Japan and the Imperial family accessible to Western readers. That strength carries the first half of the book which is by far the more interesting part. The book has a few weaknesses: 1. Everything is built up around dramatic scenes, and the tone is always too high to reflect real life. 2. The book's resolution is a weak one that doesn't adequately deal with the issues the author raises. 3. Other than Haruko, the characters are not as well developed as they might have been. As a result, the story is often flat unless some visceral event takes place. 4. Haruko's life becomes an occasional sketch of a scene after she becomes a mother. With so many blank places, Haruko becomes distant to us.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
3.8 out of 5 stars (76 customer reviews) 67 of 75 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars
The rating fell as I read on,
By Japan Reader - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Commoner: A Novel (Hardcover)
I began this book willing to give it a definite three or possible four based on the concept and the writing, but as I read on the rating steadily fell, until I got to the end convinced that this was worth one star at best. As one other reviewer said, it touched my head but not my heart -- that's a big part of it, but hardly all.The characters were flat and none of them, including Haruko, ever really came alive. She herself was tepid, and most of the others were worse. This made it very hard to sympathize with any of them or their problems. I've lived in Japan for 20 years and know the ins and outs of the royal family pretty well, so I was very disposed in this book's favor when I began. There were a few moments during Haruko's falling in love with the Crown Prince that I did feel a spark of life in the book, and interest in myself. But that faded fairly fast. I suppose the author's intention was to create a book as mannered as the Imperial Family -- well, that succeeded. Mannered unto death, and boredom. Maybe that was his intention too. It also seemed as if the author was more interested in having each phrase be a work of art than in actually bringing the plot or the characters alive. But this "art," enjoyable enough at the start, gradually became cloying, until by the end of the book I was cringing. A few examples: "He spoke from his heart, and then he took it with him." "The eyes I found looking back at me held no past and no future. "The lack of evidence was so astounding....that over time it had the effect of a powerful narcotic...separating them from their honest perceptions and absorbing all curiosity." This is purple prose you might expect of a novice, or a romance writer (sorry, romance writer friends), not an author with four published books to his credit. In addition, it seemed he chose images and incidents designed to play to a Western idea of what Japan is. All the cliches are trotted out: red falling maple leaf, the kimono (once a sash is "blood red" -- bit overdone, again), a child whose hair smells of "plum blossoms" (in autumn, metaphors getting a bit messy there). While the problems of Japan's imperial family partly -- or largely -- stem from aspects of their nationality, he's missing the biggest story here, a universal human one. A woman whose job is to produce a child suffers from fertility problems, etc. If drawing a story from the real imperial family, there are much more interesting stories to write than the one we get here. Even this one could have been told with much more life, if the author weren't determined to make it "artful" and "exotic." Japan is way less exotic than people think these days -- it's the land of Toyota, Nintendo, anime -- all of which are part of our lives. Yet people persist in loving these little bits of exoticism more than the true face. Most Japanese didn't like "Lost in Translation" because it played to stereotypes. This book does too. Finally, a lot is simply unbelievable. Besides the ending, which could never, ever, ever take place. The supposedly touching scene where a father sits on his daughter's bed to talk to her at nighttime, in early 1960s Japan? Well, to start with, I find it hard to believe that a traditional family -- the father's a sake brewer, for goodness' sake -- would have had a bed in that era. But for the father to come in and sit on the side of his daughter's bed -- that would never have happened. It's a very American gesture that even in Japan today would be almost unimaginable. A Japanese father would be far too embarrassed to do that with a grown daughter even now, never mind the early 1960s. The way the Empress expresses herself. What the young, new Crown Princess says at a news conference. And the author, for all his supposed years of research, messed up some very basic facts. The worst was when he had two people at the imperial family's villa in Nasu, taking "small walks by the seaside." I'm sorry, Nasu is in the mountains. Some people may say that a tiny slip of fact shouldn't make a difference in fiction, but it makes the author seem sloppy. This, on top of the purple prose, really detracted from my reading experience. I wasn't impressed with "Bicycle Days," which I thought was a patronizing look at Japan that pandered to stereotypes. This book hasn't changed my impression of the author much. I wish I hadn't bought this book in hardcover. Borrow it from the library or wait for it in paperback, please. 40 of 44 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
An incredibly engrossing read,
By David N - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Commoner: A Novel (Hardcover)
Such a beautifully written and fascinating story. I found myself so quickly and thoroughly caught up in a world that was previously completely unknown to me that it was hard for me to tell where biographical/historical fact ended and novelistic invention began. The fact that the story of Haruko's marriage into the semi-divine confines of Japan's royal family is in fact based on a true story only makes this book that much more intriguing. Although it's completely authentic in its tiny details of palace life, ultimately what makes this book so pleasurable in the read is it's first person narrative. Haruko is a marvelous and original character that you can't help but root for. Her journey from a cloistered family upbringing in the rubble of World War II through Japan's remarkable 20th century history is so deep and so true that it's hard to believe it was written by a man. Interestingly , one thing I kept thinking as I was enjoying this wonderful book, is that by bringing me into to the interior life of this uniquely contemporary Japanese monarch that I was somehow gaining access to another late 20th century royal icon - on a different continent - who also paid a price for being born a commoner.
41 of 47 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
His Daughter-in-Law Elect,
By Jay Dickson - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Commoner: A Novel (Hardcover)
John Burnham Schwartz's roman à clef about the Japanese imperial family takes as its centerpiece one of the most startling stories of the continuation of ancient royal tradition into the twentieth century: the life and career of the current Empress Michiko, the first commoner in memory to marry an heir to the throne. The empress's life has been paradoxically both intensely dramatic and intensely stultifying. Despised by the court insiders (and supposedly in particular by her imperial mother-in-law) for her common birth and unfamiliarity with court customs, and worn down by the dullness of court routine and the strictures of imperial tradition, the empress allegedly had a nervous breakdown in the early 1960s after the birth of her first son, losing her voice completely for several months. Then, when her husband succeeded to the throne and her son wanted to marry another commoner (this time an Oxford-educated career diplomat), she saw her own new daughter-in-law go through the same horrors she had three decades previously and then even more when the young woman cannot produce a male heir.Schwartz has as his narrator the empress, here known as "Haruko." The names are changed not to protect the innocent, but rather because Schwartz varies from the story of the current empress particularly at the end, where he imagines a different fate for the current crown princess heroically engineered by her kindly mother-in-law. There's little here critical at all of the current empress or of her husband, son, or daughter-in-law: only the emperor's dead parents are treated as in any way less than fully sympathetically (his mother is basically treated as a wicked witch). As a result it seems almost impossible that the crown princess (here called "Keiko") could get into the emotional fix she does, since everyone here seems constantly brimming over with high promises and kindly intentions. (Surely there could have been a more balanced and honest way to tell these women's stories, even as told from the empress's own perspective.) The best thing about the book is its lovely prose style, which seems simultaneously elegant and understated, as prettily befits its subject. And where else will you find a novel told from the point of view of an actual living empress? That rarity alone makes it worthy of attention. |
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