Rating: 
Summary: A garden of Delight!!!
Review: The Samurai's Garden by Gail Tsukiyama is a novel that captivates the mind and heart of the reader. The beautiful prose parallels the beautiful story line. For me the story was much like a parable.......a story that teaches a valuable lesson. This novel had layers of lessons unfolding like the breaking waves on the beach that Stephen loved to visit............the lesson of acceptance of those who are different...........the lesson of the healing power of love.....the lesson of the strength that can be drawn from nature........the lesson of the destructive forces of war..........the lesson that the truest hero may be the quiet, hardworking person at your side.........the lesson of the blindness of love to even the ravages of leprosy........etc, etc, etc........ Just as Sachi found beauty in ordinary sones and created a garden in a barren , isolated place.........we, too can find beauty and love in the most unexpected places if we open our minds and hearts. This was a wonderful and powerful novel.
Rating:
Summary: Absolutely delightful
Review: This story is a beautiful account of life in a fishing village in Japan in the late 1930's from the view of a young Chinese man sent there to recover from an illness. Tsukiyama pieces together a delicate and moving account that gives the reader a deliciously vivid yet delicate look at the Japanese culture and how a Chinese foreigner copes with the 4 seasons in a country in the process of taking over his own; and how he discovers the true inner beauty of individuals cast out from their own society in shame. Ken Giuffre' MD
Rating:
Summary: Top 5
Review: This book was by far one of THE greatest books that I have ever read. It is a beautiful tale about one young man (Stephan) and his blossoming relationship among two other people (Matsu and Sachi). This is a tale about life about learning, about nature and love for things the way they are on the inside.This is deffinately in my top five favorite books.
Rating:
Summary: Very Awesome Book!
Review: The Samurai's Garden is an extraordinary novel about beuaty and goodness. Gail Tsukiyama brings an adventure about a young Chinese man named Stephen. He was sent to his family's summer house during WWII in Japan to recover from tuberculosis. While in Japan, he meets four local residents, a young beautiful girl named Keiko, and three older people, Matsu, Sachi, and Kenzo. Hearing the unfolding story of Matsu, Sachi, and Kenzo, they became improtant in his life. this book is an awesome book and i recommend readers to read it.
Rating:
Summary: finely crafted and enticing
Review: The review title says it all. The first thing that blew me away about the book is the language used in the narration -- the metaphors and similes are simple, but completely fluent and totally appropriate and beautiful. The tranquility of a Japanese garden was conveyed perfectly throughout the entire novel.
The next thing that took my breath away was the complexities that intertwined the histories of the characters. Each character's history somehow affected another's, and in turn affected anothers in the present. It was like seeing layers upon layers go upon a canvas to create an amazing painting.
The subplots involving Stephen's romance and the leprosy town fit perfectly. I would change absolutely nothing about this book.
I have to say that this is the best Core Literature Novel I've ever read for school, even surpassing To Kill A Mockingbird.
There better be a movie made from this.
Rating:
Summary: A Rewarding Read
Review: This is a book I will recommend to anyone that appreciates beautiful writing and a finely crafted tale. Like one of the other reviewers, I did not want this book to end and was crying by the time it did. I want to thank Ms. Tsukiyama for sharing this story with me. It was a a pleasant surprise and a welcome relief and from the dreadful best sellers I have read lately.
Rating: 
Summary: How do your gardens grow?
Review: The Samurai's garden is not a stirring novel. Its tone is subdued and tranquil; a tone that is perfectly in line with its recuperative setting. That means that the interested reader should be sure not to expect a high body count, and not even one explosion. What the reader will find is a main character, Stephen, who spends a year living on the beach, swimming, painting, and asking introspective questions that lead to his own emotional maturity. The plot is not particularly spellbinding. For the most part Stephen is being exposed to the history of a few acquaintances, their interactions, and sometimes tragic endings. The stories that he learns serve the reader a simple tale with some deeper undercurrents. Relationships require tending, much like a garden. What is beauty? What is honor? What's love got to do, got to do, got to do with it? The characters are very likeable, and seem authentic to a Westerner like me; although some may consider their stoicism stereotypic. Matsu is a teddy bear with a gruff exterior. Sashi is the prom queen who had to learn true beauty was within. Kenso is the football player who never grew up. What really blooms here are the relationships developed as the story progresses. Stephen's "coming of age" story is emotional and has the capacity to tug heartstrings. For many readers that is enough.
Rating:
Summary: Short and Bittersweet
Review: I just finished this book 10 minutes ago and had to write a review. I loved this book, so much so that I cried at the end, both for the characters, and because I was so sad the story was over. It transports you to a different time, a different pace of life and a different world. Gail Tsukiyama's characters felt so real to me, I dreamt about them.
Rating:
Summary: The very best.
Review: A very lovely novel. One that I'll never forget, one that I anticipate rereading many times. A keeper.
Rating: 
Summary: The Garden has no clothes
Review: Why is it that many readers fawn over insipid books full of greeting-card platitudes? "Samurai's Garden" is truly a poor book, yet review after review praises Ms. Tsukiyama's weak prose, cliché sentiment, and generally confusing novel. It's amazing this thing ever got published - but it's still more amazing that it outsells its superior siblings, such as Kim Todd's "Tinkering with Eden," Andrew Sean Greer's "The Path of Minor Planets," and even Tobias Wolf's "The Night in Question." The exploration of why a large number of people flock to thin helpings of frosting for spiritual guidance belongs elsewhere - in a very large book, no doubt - and this is supposed to be a book review...so onward!! Tsukiyama's prose is insipid. Page after page reveals classic writing blunders. For example, she leans heavily on cliché. ("His lips were set in a tight line.") Uses adverbs to help interpret dialog. ("...he said irritatingly.") Constructs similes from the obvious. ("She stifled her shout and put her hand over her mouth like a person who was holding back a scream.") Relies on a single feature to repeatedly describe her characters. (Sachi's veil, anyone? How often does this veil slip, fall, or wag about her face?) This is the kind of writing that sends readers on auto-pilot, lulling them into a zombie-like waking sleep. We readers don't have to process the words - we actually consume this book without READING. Then there's the structure, which Tsukiyama decided to present in diary form. Which is fine in of itself, but usually presents the author with certain challenges. For example, a diarist can only write in his book if he's awake or conscious. However, in one memorable scene of "The Samurai's Garden," the diarist Stephan is knocked unconscious during a storm yet is still able to describe his injury and sensation of blacking out in the day's entry. The novel is full of similar, if less egregious, violations of time and space. The characters are flat. Neither Matsu , Sachi, Stephan, nor Keiko have a single irritating or annoying habit. The main protagonist seems to lack an interior life, recording not a single personal secret thought in the diary. No character emerges from under the shadow of their identifying descriptor - Sachi's veil; Matsu's thick, muscular body; Keiko's younger sister; Stephan's tuberculosis. Matsu and Sachi spill their life's secrets without much prodding, yet they are both depicted as private and secretive. Everything complex, dirty, unpleasant, and interesting is swept from the pages of this book. There's not a single lie, duck-footed walk, penis, or bowel movement in the book. The historical facts upon which this book is based are completely muddled. What's Stephan doing in Japan anyway? He's from Hong Kong, which leads me to believe he's an English citizen, but that's not mentioned in the book. If he were a Chinese citizen, is it likely that he would be allowed to enter Japan? After all, the two countries are at war during the narration of the book. There is also a lot of animosity between the Chinese and the Japanese. Is it likely that a Japanese would readily be known as a servant of a Chinese in 1937? It seems unsafe and - knowing the national attitude of the Japanese towards their Asian neighbors in this time - unrealistic. And why doesn't Stephan even THINK TWICE about smooching his girl? He's got TUBERCULOSIS! Here's what I found in a simple web search about TB: "The TB germ is carried on droplets in the air, and can enter the body through the airway. A person with active pulmonary tuberculosis can spread the disease by coughing or sneezing...To become infected, a person has to come in close contact with another person having active tuberculosis. In other words, the person has to breathe the same air in which the person with active disease coughs or sneezes." Considering that a medical cure for TB didn't exist until 1944, he's playing havoc with the health and life of his girlfriend, never mind the threat to her family's honor. But - oops! - I'm letting reality interfere with your enjoyment of the book! Most people who are reading this will be irate by this point. After all, if the Amazon posts are to be believed, the majority of readers actually liked this book. A lot. But I argue that your enjoyment stems from comfort and simplicity, a coddling of your entrenched clichés about life, happiness, and existence. But the sentiments in this book do NOT add to our understanding of life! They're better saved for greeting cards. Life is rotten and mean, ugly, scary, dirty, and complex. No one is as simple, eager, honest, and good as Matsu - and thank goodness! What a bore! Everybody has mistakes in their past, has told lies, has wrong thoughts, and selfish desires mixed in with their good qualities -- Martin Luther King Jr was an adulterer, and Hitler was a charming dinner companion. Nothing is absolute. Life is a combination of good and bad, and the evolving dispute over what exactly those terms mean. "The Samurai's Garden" is a hiding place, not a vantage-point.
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