A Hundred Flowers by Gail Tsukiyama

Rating

* * * * *
 
The book's description from the publisher's website:

China, 1957. Chairman Mao has declared a new openness in society: “Let a hundred flowers bloom; let a hundred schools of thought contend.” Many intellectuals fear it is only a trick, and Kai Y ing’s husband, Sheng, a teacher, has promised not to jeopardize their safety or that of their young son, T ao. But one July morning, just before his sixth birthday, Tao watches helplessly as Sheng is dragged away for writing a letter criticizing the Communist Party and sent to a labor camp for “reeducation.”

A year later, still missing his father desperately, Tao climbs to the top of the hundred-year-old kapok tree in front of their home, wanting to see the mountain peaks in the distance. But Tao slips and tumbles thirty feet to the courtyard below, badly breaking his leg.

As Kai Ying struggles to hold her small family together in the face of this shattering reminder of her husband’s absence, other members of the household must face their own guilty secrets and strive to find peace in a world where the old sense of order is falling. Once again, Tsukiyama brings us a powerfully moving story of ordinary people facing extraordinary circumstances with grace and courage.

Quietly unassuming. I have always wondered how to best express what Tsukiyama's novels are like and with A Hundred Flowers I have  finally found the right words: quietly unassuming, until at the very end the true beauty of it stunned me.

What can I write about A Hundred Flowers that I haven't already praised when writing about The Street of a Thousand Blossoms and The Samurai's Garden? I've loved them both and although I approached Ms. Tsukiyama's newest 'jewel' with trepidation (I was anxious about how it would measure up to her other 'jewels'), I love A Hundred Flowers. I love the writing, I love the tone, and especially, I love the message it carries: the hope that keeps us humans going despite the almost equal despair and unfairness of life. 

I could give you a rant about the deceit and cruelty of communism (living through the last decade of it myself), a socialist movement that may sound good in theory, but it never, ever is good in practice. But I won't. A Hundred Flowers will hopefully compel you to research further and learn about Mao's
Hundred Flowers Campaign and Great Leap Forward. Trust me, it's worth it. This greatly talented writer will show you the truth in words such as these:

Kai Ying tried to imagine what it must have been like to have servants doing all the things that now filled her days. It was the bourgeoisie lifestyle Mao and the Communist Party had despised and fought against, declaring victory for the people. And yet, why was there never enough rice or oil or coal for the people?

Gail Tsukiyama will first and foremost, however, help you understand what the truest hardship is, how decisions of one person (in this case, Chairman Mao Zedong's) have the power to shake the foundations of whole families, the power to cause suffering of wives, husbands and children, who quite possibly suffered the most just like little Tao. He couldn't fully comprehend what was happening, why people he loved disappeared from his life or caused him heartbreak. And in the end he had to grow up faster than any child ever should. But those decisions will never break those people. As long as there is hope, they'll persevere. And therein lies the true beauty of A Hundred Flowers.

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FTC: I received an e-galley of A Hundred Flowers from the publisher, St. Martin's Press, for review.

The Samurai's Garden by Gail Tsukiyama

Rating:

*****

The book's description from Goodreads:

The daughter of a Chinese mother and a Japanese father, Tsukiyama uses the Japanese invasion of China during the late 1930s as a somber backdrop for her unusual story about a 20-year-old Chinese painter named Stephen who is sent to his family's summer home in a Japanese coastal village to recover from a bout with tuberculosis. Here he is cared for by Matsu, a reticent housekeeper and a master gardener. Over the course of a remarkable year, Stephen learns Matsu's secret and gains not only physical strength, but also profound spiritual insight. Matsu is a samurai of the soul, a man devoted to doing good and finding beauty in a cruel and arbitrary world, and Stephen is a noble student, learning to appreciate Matsu's generous and nurturing way of life and to love Matsu's soulmate, gentle Sachi, a woman afflicted with leprosy. 


The only other book by Gail Tsukiyama I've read is The Street of a Thousand Blossoms (which I loved), and even though The Samurai's Garden is significantly shorter both in number of pages and in scope, it still contains just as much beauty and tenderness. Within the mere 200 pages, I came to care deeply for Sachi and Matsu, and even Stephen. It felt as if I've accompanied them throughout the bigger part of their lives and I still wanted to stay with them for just a little bit longer. There's not much, if any, action in this novel but it's not the kind of book you'd want any quick plot to reside in. There's no need for that. The Samurai's Garden is instead what we all need in our lives sometimes, a slowing down, an almost poetic meditation on the beauty of life and the world around us and within us. Therefore, if you're looking for a quick storyline, find something else to read because you won't find it in here.

Ms Tsukiyama has an uncanny insight into a human being's nature and it shows in this little book perhaps even more than in The Street of a Thousand Blossoms. It's amazing how she can pinpoint our yearnings and our cruelty in a brisk prose that comes as close to poetry as it gets (and even though I don't read poetry, The Samurai's Garden afforded me a glimpse of what I imagine people who love poetry feel when they read their most beloved pieces).

If I had any doubts as to whether I should put Gail Tsukiyama on my 'go to' and 'in case of emergency' lists of authors, I have none anymore. Reaching for The Samurai's Garden and finding my enthusiasm for reading coming back to me again after I'd worried greatly that another major reader's block fell upon me, dispelled all my doubts.

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Gail Tsukiyama has written quite a few more books which makes me all the happier, as now I have many more days and weeks to immerse myself in her fantastic writing. You can learn about them on the website dedicated to the author. 

I am also very happy to announce to any fans (present and future) that Ms Tsukiyama has another novel, A Hundred Flowers, coming out in August from St. Martin's Press.

The Street of a Thousand Blossoms by Gail Tsukiyama

I heard many good things about this author, I finally got a copy of one of her books and then waited two years to actually read it :( And it still would probably have been unread, if it weren't for the girls in my bookclub who chose it as a monthly read.

The novel essentially tells the story of two orphaned brothers, Hiroshi and Kenji living in Tokyo and growing up under the care of their beloved grandparents. The readers follow the boy from their childhood, through the teenage years until their adulthood. In the thirty years much is happening. Tragedy strikes more than once, or even twice. Japan goes through tragic times together with the rest of the world fighting in WWII, millions of people die as a result of Hiroshima's and Nagasaki's nuclear bombing and in the midst of all that two boys grow up with dreams to become something more than just two more dutiful Japanese citizens.

As I have already mentioned in my bookclub, I fell absolutely and irrevocably under Gail Tsukiyama's spell. Her writing is exactly what I expect from the best literary fiction, it's very lyrical, with a lot of passages that I woud want to commit to memory and with wonderful characters. Why are they so wonderful, you ask? Because they are painfully human and very real. Not only Hiroshi and Kenji, but their friends, their grandparents and everyone they meet on the road of life, deal with life, death, loss, tragedy and happiness in their own ways and the more I got to read about them the more they seemed like people I'd love to know and the less like a characters on the pages of the book. Some are strong and determined to get what they want despite the circumstances, others just 'go with the flow' simply to survive and a few can't make it at all.

The Street of a Thousand Blossoms is not an action packed book, it's rather a panorama of people's lives in the midst and aftereffects of great tragedy. And because it's Japanese, the author imparts a lot of wisdom that I think I always like the most about Asian fiction. Most of it is simple but it has stronger impact on my own thoughts and actions than any self-help book out there. I know that not everyone will appreciate this novel for precisely the same reasons I loved it so much: it's not about one main plot so much as about the characters, relationships and dealing or not dealing with whatever may come. It's one of those books that once you get familiarized with the people in there, you pick your favorites, most intriguing or most tragic and then you just want the story to go on and on. You want to know what happens in their lives after you turn the last page. I am now ready to go to the bookstore and get every single book Ms. Tsukiyama penned.