Snow Falling on Cedars
Ratings80
Average rating3.4
Lending library find. Reading this in the coastal Pacific Northwest during winter, I would agree with the trade blurb that this is “densely atmospheric” - Guterson's abiding attention to the ecosystems and weather of this area is clear, as both are close to characters in this novel. Style-wise, he's a bit reminiscent of Richard Ford, but without the humor, and Marilynne Robinson, without being so transporting. Good, but not great. I really appreciated the timespan he brought to the subject matter (the unjust incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII is central to the plot), so that the antecedents and aftershocks of trauma also rise to the surface. I was briefly irrationally angry in a few later chapters when I got worried there might be a sad ending (spoiler alert, I guess), but Guterson allows his flawed humans, for whom his affection is also clear, to muddle forward into an imperfect future.
Maybe there's a good book buried in this beast. The issue is that the good parts are drowned into endless boring parts that drove me crazy. If I'm able for a moment to redact all the useless parts, the book is sweet and nice and describe some interesting communities and some part of the American history I knew very little about.
I've owned this one for an insanely long time and never read it because ... well, both the cover and the title are super boring and neither are really representative of the content within. While it centers on a murder trial, its heart is much more of a character study of the people who lived on San Piedro Island in the 1950s, and the prejudices they hold against the Japanese immigrants that lived on the island before (and after) World War II. It's slow and languid and descriptive (perhaps a tad overly so), and it's got some super irritating moments of sexist micro aggression – rankling me the most: 1) a woman was described as “31 and still graceful,” and 2) a main character's mother's “face looked bland and old with no mascara, for which she asked [her son's] forgiveness,” which was irrelevant, and also what?? – but I still found the characters and the trial compelling enough to keep going. I actually enjoyed it more than this review is letting on, but those irritations are keeping me from rating it higher.
It seems like this was a very appropriate book to read in the current political environment. It's amazing how we can treat all people of a different race (color, religion, sexual orientation) the same. These people are all individuals. Once we understand that, life will be much happier.
This story gave me topic for discussion with my mixed-race granddaughter.
I own the DVD and look forward to watching.
I liked this! It wasn't what I was expecting–I wasn't sure exactly what I was expecting–but I liked it. I enjoyed the mystery and got really wrapped up in it, and I think it did a reasonably good job describing the aftermath of civil rights clusterfuck that was Japanese internment. The sex scenes were all kind of weird and awkward, but maybe that was intentional?
