The Gardens of Kyoto: A Novel

Rating:
Summary: The Ghosts of Memory
Review: The Gardens of Kyoto is a beautiful, heartbreaking, lyrically-told story that I highly recommend. The narrator, Ellen is telling her story to her daughter from some future vantage point. Right from the beginning, Walbert lets us know that things aren't always as Ellen remembers them. Ellen is telling the story of when she first met her cousin Randall, and how the Oak trees lined the drive. But then, just a few paragraphs later, she thinks perhaps it may have been walnut trees. Most of the shifting memories are not as obvious and not as harmless as that. Her story involves her relationship with two men--Randall, her cousin whow is killed in World War II, and Henry Rock, a young army officer she meets just before he goes to the Korean War. Her relationship with these two men and the devastations of the wars upon all of them shape her life irrevocably. Her memory plays tricks on her, plays tricks on us. She hides bits of the story from us, until these facts surface in shocking ways. It is as if she doesn't want her daughter (and us) to know the truth until we absolutely have to. The gardens of Kyoto serve as a wonderful metaphor for what remains after a war, for obvious illusions. Ellen is like the gardens, or is she? While the gardens were specifically spared in wars, as was Ellen, Ellen's life is ultimately changed for the worse as a result of these wars. The story Ellen tells, the ghosts who haunt her life, provide us with a fascinating tale that I highly recommend.

Rating:
Summary: Where's the payoff?
Review: The Gardens of Kyoto is the story of several dull characters who only shine when compared to the dishrag-like personality of the passive main character, Ellen. It's like listening to the dementia-fogged ramblings of that great-aunt no one can stand.

The narration is overclogged with bizarre and inapt descriptions. Point of view jumps back and forth with no rhyme or reason, and she leaves things unexplained for far too long. For example, I didn't figure out what the character's first name was until book three. She describes scenes which entice the reader to find out more; such as the hidden room in her uncle's house which was a hiding place of runaway slaves, and then she drops them, or explains them with an easily missed sentence or two. I wanted to find out more about something, anything, that involved a plot, but alas, a plot was not forthcoming.

If it weren't for my husbands insistence that this book was interesting, I would have put it down in the first chapter. After a while, and with repeated promises from him that it would get better, the loose ends and the irrational passivity of the main character kept me enrapt. As he warned me, it's like a train wreck. I have to say that the loose ends were wrapped up at the end, and yet it was extremely unsatisfying. A character driven novel should have intriguing characters, and yet The Gardens of Kyoto is filled with bland passive automotons who merely stagger through life allowing things to happen to them. The only time the main character actually takes action of her own accord, is when she is doing something pointlessly destructive. From page one to the end, this book kept me asking, "(...) When's something going to happen?"

Rating:
Summary: Where's the payoff?
Review: The Gardens of Kyoto is the story of several dull characters who only shine when compared to the dishrag-like personality of the passive main character, Ellen. It's like listening to the dementia-fogged ramblings of that great-aunt no one can stand.

The narration is overclogged with bizarre and inapt descriptions. Point of view jumps back and forth with no rhyme or reason, and she leaves things unexplained for far too long. For example, I didn't figure out what the character's first name was until book three. She describes scenes which entice the reader to find out more; such as the hidden room in her uncle's house which was a hiding place of runaway slaves, and then she drops them, or explains them with an easily missed sentence or two. I wanted to find out more about something, anything, that involved a plot, but alas, a plot was not forthcoming.

If it weren't for my husbands insistence that this book was interesting, I would have put it down in the first chapter. After a while, and with repeated promises from him that it would get better, the loose ends and the irrational passivity of the main character kept me enrapt. As he warned me, it's like a train wreck. I have to say that the loose ends were wrapped up at the end, and yet it was extremely unsatisfying. A character driven novel should have intriguing characters, and yet The Gardens of Kyoto is filled with bland passive automotons who merely stagger through life allowing things to happen to them. The only time the main character actually takes action of her own accord, is when she is doing something pointlessly destructive. From page one to the end, this book kept me asking, "(...) When's something going to happen?"


Rating:
Summary: The tyranny of social conventions
Review: This is a book to give to those people who lament the decadence of modern society and look longingly to a more innocent time: a time when every husband was right, every wife happy, every soldier heroic, and every girl a virgin until marriage.
Apparently, that's what social mores of the 40's and 50's insisted on. So what could you do, if your life wasn't as picture-perfect as it was supposed to be? The characters in Walberg's book face this dilemma. Some of them sacrifice their desires in order to fit in, while others die themsleves as sacrificial lambs on the altar of conformity, and the rest simply spend their lives lying about who they are.
Five characters in this book are soldiers; none fits the "hero" mold that society prescribes for them. Even the one who died on Iwo Jima was not killed in combat, but died accidentally after the fighting was over. Yet this isn't really a book about war - more about a society that worked so hard to keep up appearances, that no one was allowed to be different, or even human.
Consider the plight of the narrator's oldest sister. In one of the most poignant moments in the book, she breaks decorum by crying at the dinner table in front of the whole family, then confesses a desperate and shocking problem. Members of the family silently look to the father, waiting for his response. But Rita's problem is so far outside the bounds of what "nice people" talk about, that all he can do is mumble weak, useless platitudes at her. The pitiful thing is that he adores his daughter -- but social conventions won't let him help her, or even admit that her problem is real. When the problem leads to her death, the whole family continues to lie to eachother as if they never saw it coming. And in the ultimate victory of good etiquette, the narrator politely thanks her sister's killer just hours after Rita's death, knowing full well what he has done.
Those were the good old days? Thank God I missed them.

Rating:
Summary: Poetical, lyrical crap
Review: This is probably the worst book I have ever had the misfortune to pick up. I was really excited because I just came from Kyoto, Japan and the reviews seemed pretty good. The love story is some fictional creature that is read between the lines. And the mystery is what possesses a person to read this book and declare it wonderful? It's beyond me. I don't mean to offend anyone but I just wanted to warn people of what might be.

Rating:
Summary: Gentle, memory-laden treat
Review: With probably the best cover design of the year, this book seduced me. And while it didn't blow me away, I've found it keeps coming back to me weeks after I finished. A paen to the vaguaries of memory, it follows its narrator through a romantically charged friendship with her cousin through her strange college days and on to a post WWII romance that results in a child. We're never sure if what she's remembering is correct or colored by her losses...she's an "unreliable narrator," as we might say in English 101. But unlike some other unreliables, we care about this character and ultimately, about the book.

Rating:
Summary: A love story, a war story, a story about people
Review: Wonderful novel. Those who disgrace Kate Walberts fine achievement simply do not get this novel. It is endearing and heartwarming, sad and sometimes painful to read. Words are put together nicely and the pages are often like words of wisdom. I loved this book, and I am sure I would return to it again and again.
It's not your typical happy go lucky ending of a book, instead it is how you live, you love, and how there are no guarantees in this life. Sometimes what you get is simply what you may get.