Book 136: The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng
Book 136: The Garden of Evening Mists .
Author: Tan Twan Eng, 2011.
Genre: Period Fiction. Asian Literature. War.
Other Details: Hardback. 350 pages. Unabridged audiobook. Length: 15 hrs, 36 mins. Read by Anna Bentinck.
"On a mountain above the clouds once lived a man who had been the gardener of the Emperor of Japan."
This opening line immediately draws the reader into a novel that combines a powerful tale of the Japanese occupation of Malaya and its aftermath with Zen and Taoist philosophy and their applications.
Its narrator is Supreme Court Judge Teoh Yun Ling, who after retiring from her position in Kuala Lumpur has returned to the Cameron Highlands. While there she begins to contemplate her relationship with Nakamura Aritomo, former gardener to the Emperor Hirohito. In self-imposed exile he had created Yugiri, a "garden of evening mists". When Yun Ling moved to the area in 1949 after assisting in prosecuting Japanese war criminals, she had approached Aritomo to design a garden in memory of her sister, who had died in the Japanese labour camp from which she was the only survivor. At first he refuses but later offers to take Yun Ling as his apprentice so she might design the memorial garden herself. Given her hatred of the Japanese she is at first reluctant but agrees to this arrangement. Through Yun Ling's memory we learn not only how this relationship unfolded but about the circumstances of her imprisonment and the physical and emotional scars she bears.
I found myself swept up into the world described within this exquisite novel. The language was haunting and lyrical and its story compelling. I read this as part of the Man Booker Prize Shadow Group and while Hilary Mantel's Bring Up the Bodies was my favourite, this novel came a close second place in terms of strong characterisation, powerful story-telling and evoking a wonderful sense of place. A few readers in the group were disturbed by certain scenes set during the war, yet I felt these, while undoubtedly brutal, were essential to understanding Yun Ling's story. Themes of memory and forgetting run through the novel, physically represented by statues of the Greek goddess Mnemosyne and her unnamed, forgotten sister.
Audio coverThe novel provided a great deal of information about the philosophy and practice of gardening in China and Japan as well as about the history of Malaya during the 20th century. I found I related to its narrator given the ambivalence I often feel between an appreciation of Chinese and Japanese art and culture contrasted with human rights violations and the cruelty and exploitation of wildlife and the environment that seems endemic in those cultures.
Aside from reading the print version, I also listened to its audio edition. Even with this double experience, it is a novel I would hope to re-read and plan on suggesting it as a reading group selection for 2013.