The Strangeness of Beauty

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful.
Review: Absolutely beautiful novel about three generations of Japanese women. When Etsuko's sister Naomi dies during childbirth in Seattle, Etsuko takes on the role of mother to the baby, Hanae. After a few years of American life together, Hanae's father decides it's time to send both Hanae and Etsuko back to Japan, so Hanae can learn about her heritage and get to know her maternal grandmother, Chie. The three women, a Japanese woman from a prestigious samurai family (Chie), her ignored American-immigrant daughter (Etsuko), and her American-born granddaughter (Hanae), learn much about each other and the world during their turbulent years together. The setting is pre-World War II Japan, providing not only an incredible background, but the means for a fascinating history lesson as well. The characters are unique, intense, and real. And their interactions (both with each other and with their countries) are some of the most moving demonstrations of emotion I've encountered in a novel in some time. My fiance gave me this book for Valentine's Day, saying he thought it sounded like a book I might enjoy (and he knows how much a good book can impact me) -- I found it absolutely amazing that he was so right on. While a book might not sound like the most romantic of gifts, it sure says a lot about him that he knew me so well he was able to pick out a book I not only couldn't put down, but felt moved to copy passages out of as well. Highly, HIGHLY recommended! (And, boy, am I marrying well or what?)

Rating:
Summary: A beautiful tale
Review: In this very well written novel we encounter three different members of a Japanese family, each member has her own ties with their cultural habitat, and is able to see the other's point of view and adapt to being a family, with war, different cultures and personalities keeping them always on edge. Very well done.

Rating:
Summary: Not what I expected, but fascinating
Review: The Strangeness of Beauty is an intriguing book. At times, the prose is breathtaking, lightly skimming along the surface of three generations of women (and several men, in passing). At times, it reads like a sociology textbook -- a good one, but cold and impersonal. Characters are given to standing up and giving declarative speeches about things that have happened to them and their families.

Although the novel is ostensibly a first-person narrative by Etsuko, a woman of the middle generation, she frequently projects herself into the minds of others, sometimes in the first person. Other times, she gives third-person accounts of stories she could not possibly have witnessed. So what is real (in the fictional sense) and what is imagined by the narrator is never truly clear.

So why does the book work so well? Narrator Etsuko's almost compulsive drive to try to understand the rigid characters around her -- so driven that at one point, the narrator falls into a grinning, blank-eyed depression and stops trying to figure her world out altogether. Because she is puzzled, the reader is puzzled, and we are drawn into her search for understanding. As in life, we learn about these characters in little, wave-like spurts, without anyone's story being tied up into a neat bow.

The result is a book that cannot be summarized easily. This is one book that really must be experienced first-hand.

Rating:
Summary: IS BEAUTY REALLY STRANGE?
Review: This novel, which spans from 1922 to 1939 in both America (Seattle) and Japan, attempts to tell the I-story (Japanese for autobiography) of Etsuko Sone -- a woman who has seen much sadness by the time she is in her twenties. Through her I-story, we learn that she was given away at birth by her mother Chie who is in a serious state of depression after losing her first born son in infancy. Etsuko is brought up by a farming family and when she learns of her true heritage, in the House of Fuji, it is her decision to remain with the parents who have raised her and not to return to her biological mother. Love brings Etsuko to Seattle where she is subsequently followed by her sister Naomi who intends to marry the man she loves in Seattle. All is well until Naomi dies in childbirth and Etsuko is left to raise and love Naomi's daughter Hanae. All Etsuko has ever wanted in life is to be a good wife and a good mother. The following years will show Etsuko's desire to be the best mother for Hanae as well as trying to reconnect with the mother who gave her away at birth. Her mother, Chie, will eventually teach her to find her own purpose in life and not to depend on someone else for her happiness. Therein lies the "strangeness in beauty" -- turn your uncertainty into adventure and know that beauty can be found in what's common and small.

Rating:
Summary: Not what I expected, but fascinating
Review: Unbelievable beautiful and influencial. Not much more I can say. Read it, there's no possible way for you to be dissapointed.

Rating:
Summary: Skillful exploration of Japnanese/Japanese-American cultures
Review: well to tell you guys the truth. im not really into reading but this book by lydia made me want to read. the interesting thing about the book that i thought was how she related to seattle. since im not really from seattle i thought it would be interesting to find out some things about it. also i liked the way she made her characters do so many things in such a small time period. Today i got the pleasure of meeting her in my English 101 class. She is a very briliant and interesting person she had many fasinating things to talk about. The only thing that i want is for her to write some sort of a sequal. Because noone really knows what exactly happens to any of the charaters after the story has ended. But i really enjoyed this book and i recomend this "I story" to anyone who likes to read. Even if you dont enjoy reading you will like this wonderful novel. Plus she is a wonderful woman...AND I GOT MY BOOK SIGNED:)