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Summary: Addresses a very crucial, and often-overlooked issue
Review: Snow Falling on Cedars is more than just a well-written novel. It is a political statement. Being Americans, we often have a highly-developed sense of national pride, so established that we neglect to recognize our mistakes and lapses of judgment. The Japanese internment is addressed tactifully and emotionally in this novel, a refreshing change from the usual cold shoulder it receives in this country. Guterson brings to light the damaging and very present prejudices existing in America, forcing the reader to think -- but without offending anybody.
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Summary: A Moving, Compelling, Complicated Story!
Review: I could hardly put this book down! Although set in the 1950's, the novel covers issues relevant to our society today: prejudice between races/cultures, opportunity to get ahead and "ceilings", mismatched lovers, and crime. Although I read SFOC last year, its images remain with me. Every character was well developed - one of the most interesting being the wife of the farmer who dies (I told you it's been awhile; her name escapes me, but the character remains) and instinctively makes a decision that is pivotal for most of the characters in the book. I've never been to Washington state, but I felt as if I were there through the rich depictions of the forest, similar to my own here in the Southwest (perhaps minus the fog!) This book was a five-star to me and one I have given as a gift to family and friends, and recommended to many others. Bravo, Mr. Guterson!
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Summary: Let this book soak into your bones
Review: As an avid reader (of everything) for the past five decades, I'm annoyed that I somehow missed hearing about Gutterson until a friend recommended him to me. I know something about the far Northwest and I have several longtime Japanese-American friends, and this story is true to the cadence and nuances of both, alternating between the quiet dignity of the strawberry farmers (even in the love scenes) and the hard-edged instincts of the fishermen.I finished this amazing book a month ago and have read two other novels since... yet scenes and bits of dialogue and descriptions of the island keep wafting back into my mind. I can't recommend it highly enough.
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Summary: An excellent book, describing a darker period of America.
Review: This book is well written because it covers many conditions of the human spirit, war, love, race, prejudice, and truth. It was easy, and fun to read because it was placed in the Pacific Northwest making it easy to picture the surroundings and some of the locations mentioned in the book. The truly impressive accomplishment to David Guterson was his ability to discuss a condoned period of hatred in the history of America. As a student, one doesn't often hear of the Japanese-American concentration camps that were set up to keep a paranoid country comfortable during wartime. It was interesting to see how well white Americans got along with their Japanese neighbors. Among farmers, colleagues, and business owners, there were no troubles until a strain was placed upon the fragile relationship. Then, whites became prejudiced and biased against their foreign neighbors. The Japanese were constantly under suspicion and scrutiny for no reason, other than their skin color. The best quote to describe this book comes from the Los Angeles Times. They describe Snow Falling on Cedars as, "Haunting . . . a whodunit complete with courtroom maneuvering and surprising turns of evidence and at the same time a mystery, something altogether richer and deeper." This book gave away no clues as to how it might end. Normally, mystery writers attempt to give the reader a fighting chance to match wits against the protagonist sleuth, but not Guterson. By making the characters deep fragile and constantly prying evidence from everywhere, the climax is kept tightly clouded up until the very end. My favorite scene is when Guterson is describing the forest where Ishmael Chambers and Hatsue met for romantic getaways. Because of the words used to describe the surroundings, my mind vividly pictured the images of the giant fir trees, surrounded by a carpet of pine needles. One can almost hear the birds chirping, the nearby book babbling quietly, and the squirrels chattering to each other in the canopy above. Al! beit, cheesy, this setting makes it very easy for the reader to see how two such different people could fall hopelessly in love. Out of all the characters, I liked Hatsue the best. She is a girl growing up in a confusing world, victimized by chaotic times. Although her existence is already difficult enough, being a Japanese woman living on the West coast during WWII, she falls in love with a white boy, adding yet another worry to an already precarious life. Some have described these two as "star crossed lovers" but that doesn't truly apply. Hatsue never loved Ishmael with as much faith and devotion as Ishmael loved her. She was wrenched from innocence quickly however when she was deported to the hellish world of concentration camps. Hatsue had to become a woman overnight, in order to survive. The only problem I had with the book was that the trial scenes were too drawn out. Although interesting and vital to the story, the court scenes just created a small amount of tediousness that causes the middle and the end to drag a bit. Also I thought the end was a bit cliche. Should Ishmael turn over his evidence and free Hatsue's husband, or should he sit on his info and be reunited with his love? Moral or love? This is a theme which is becoming more common in a lot of books of different genres, but although it is a cliche, it is still well written and does little to take away from the story. These are such minute problems that it is easily overlook by someone who has enjoyed the rest of the book. Overall, Snow Falling on Cedars is a wonderful, powerfully written book, well deserving of the PEN/Faulkner Award.
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Summary: Never Mind The Hype
Review: I appreciated this book because many of its elements appeal to my taste as a reader: copious detail in setting, multiple characters developed, courtroom drama, etc. I believe it was a compelling and well-written novel. However, the book is not perfect and is NOT on the level of "To Kill A Mockingbird." Guterson's imagery was somewhat more mellow than I would have used, especially at the outset, which sets the pace for the entire novel. It wasn't exactly vivid, even though it was trying to be as visual and sense-oriented as possible. The mellow and hardworking life of a small Northwestern town is captured in good-quality descriptions, but they are neither especially vibrant nor unforgettable. I enjoyed the multiple settings and rounded vision, but Guterson would have done better to narrow his scope. His themes--young love, war, racism, predjudice, accountability, morality, loss--are tied together adquately, but fail to form the seamless whole I expected from such an acclaimed novel. Each setting is effectively handled (perhaps the Japanese camp is portrayed the least adequately), but each also fails to fully unite around one common theme. Everything tries to lead up to Ishmael's decision, but some of the paths are wandering to say the least. That's OK if the separate paths stand on their own and make useful plot or character points by themselves, but I felt there were points when the author was just talking about things because he could. The novel reads like a movie, complete with close-ups, flashbacks, literary "snapshots" of the town and its inhabitants, and the final "plot twist." And like any good movie, this book needs an editor. If it were to be made a movie in present form, without any cuts, it would require especially attractive and talented actors to draw us in. Overall, I liked the book, but it wasn't unique enough to stand as one of my all-time favorites. "Catch-22" was meandering as well, but the style was so intriguing that I couldn'! t stop reading it. The style in "Snow" was good as far as novels go, but it was not nearly distinctive enough to stand out in my memory.
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Summary: Oh dear
Review: Crumbs, all these people writing reviews about how good this book is. I've obviously missed something. I bought it on specific, unprompted recommendation. I'm not a half-wit and I read it during a long 2-day Canadian train journey, so I wasn't far off, geographically speaking. It's . . . , well, it's just . . . so, so. And it's obviously a 'set book' in colleges. Good for that, I suppose. Quite a high word quotient. Good value for money. Maybe the train was to blame (or even me).
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Summary: Snow Falling Off a Cliff
Review: I liked the great amount of detail Guterson went into with this novel. However, it was getting to the point where I wish he would have gotten on with the story. It was just way too long for the point he was trying to get across about this small bigoted town in Washington in the 1950's. I think that he should have gone into more detail regarding the conclusion than everything else in the novel. When I got to the end, I was like, "this is it?!" I read 400+ pages for this!!?
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Summary: Snow Falling on Cedars is an extremely well-written book.
Review: I am an avid reader and this is one of the best books I have read in a long time. Snow Falling on Cedars was extremely well-written, exquisitely structured and extremely thought provoking. Our book group meets tomorrow to discuss this novel and I look forward to a scintillating discussion.
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Summary: Don't believe the hype.
Review: I picked up this book because I heard all the hoopla. But it was terrible -- and alarming that the breed of American novelists that confuse "subtle" with "saying nothing" is growing. I'd rather be thrown into that goddamn strawberry patch and die a agonizing death than have to pick up that book again!
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Summary: Enthralling court room drama; skewed historomantical account
Review: I read this novel for a book club at work. I would not have read this book by the summary on the back cover because it is a sensitive topic for me an Asian man. Although it is one of the points of the book to contain the characters in mystery I found them to be unaccessible and almost one dimensional. It still sees the Japanese characters in stereotypical roles, ie references to Hatsue as a geisha girl and the stoic tightly wound Matsuo. We don't really see the complexity of the Japanese characters, their anger and their broken dreams in realistic ways. The relationship between Hatsue and Matsuo is formalized and not real to me as I see my parents' relationship. What I am saying is that Asian marriages are not always this noble. We get angry too!!! The relationship between Carl Heines and his wife is more real in a physical and banal way. Lastly, the relationship between Ishmael and Hatsue (as a young girl) is romantized. This is indicative that white men still see Japanese or asian women from behind some smokey glass partition. The courtroom drama was more interesting to me. The two lawyers were entertaining and had some virtue of integrity. The mental acrobatics and the cross examination treated the readers as if we are intelligent, for a change. It was an honest and perhaps a true portrayal of the small town judicial system. It had a strong structure and was very well written. Overall, this book was enlightening to some degree. It, however, did not push the limits and did not challenge our views of how things really were. We still don't know both sides of the story and perhaps we will never know.
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