Book: The Garden of Evening Mists
Thursday, 13 July 2023 12:18![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elusivekThe Garden of Evening Mists 
Tan Twan Eng
Amazon Product Link
Malaya, 1951. Yun Ling Teoh, the scarred lone survivor of a brutal Japanese wartime camp, seeks solace among the jungle-fringed tea plantations of Cameron Highlands. There she discovers Yugiri, the only Japanese garden in Malaya, and its owner and creator, the enigmatic Aritomo, exiled former gardener of the emperor of Japan. Despite her hatred of the Japanese, Yun Ling seeks to engage Aritomo to create a garden in memory of her sister, who died in the camp. Aritomo refuses but agrees to accept Yun Ling as his apprentice "until the monsoon comes." Then she can design a garden for herself.
As the months pass, Yun Ling finds herself intimately drawn to the gardener and his art, while all around them a communist guerilla war rages. But the Garden of Evening Mists remains a place of mystery. Who is Aritomo and how did he come to leave Japan? And is the real story of how Yun Ling managed to survive the war perhaps the darkest secret of all?
I read the book because I really enjoyed the movie, and since the movie had a somewhat ambiguous ending, I thought, as most book-to-movies go, the book would have answers.
I ended up with more questions though.
There’s a lot of subtlety going on and I can’t catch them all. Not necessarily a bad thing, just me being slow.
I really enjoyed the writing. The writing had an air of… misty-ness to it, as if in a dream.
What I really didn’t understand was how did Yun Ling know that the vacant spot is where her camp was? I don’t recall reading anywhere that Aritomo had told her that, only that the empty space is intentional of a Horoshi to leave it blank. There’s a lot of things being implied but not outrightly being said, so I’m left wondering “so…. Is it that?”
Very happy to have read the book after the movie.
Tan Twan Eng
Amazon Product Link
Malaya, 1951. Yun Ling Teoh, the scarred lone survivor of a brutal Japanese wartime camp, seeks solace among the jungle-fringed tea plantations of Cameron Highlands. There she discovers Yugiri, the only Japanese garden in Malaya, and its owner and creator, the enigmatic Aritomo, exiled former gardener of the emperor of Japan. Despite her hatred of the Japanese, Yun Ling seeks to engage Aritomo to create a garden in memory of her sister, who died in the camp. Aritomo refuses but agrees to accept Yun Ling as his apprentice "until the monsoon comes." Then she can design a garden for herself.
As the months pass, Yun Ling finds herself intimately drawn to the gardener and his art, while all around them a communist guerilla war rages. But the Garden of Evening Mists remains a place of mystery. Who is Aritomo and how did he come to leave Japan? And is the real story of how Yun Ling managed to survive the war perhaps the darkest secret of all?
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I read the book because I really enjoyed the movie, and since the movie had a somewhat ambiguous ending, I thought, as most book-to-movies go, the book would have answers.
I ended up with more questions though.
There’s a lot of subtlety going on and I can’t catch them all. Not necessarily a bad thing, just me being slow.
I really enjoyed the writing. The writing had an air of… misty-ness to it, as if in a dream.
What I really didn’t understand was how did Yun Ling know that the vacant spot is where her camp was? I don’t recall reading anywhere that Aritomo had told her that, only that the empty space is intentional of a Horoshi to leave it blank. There’s a lot of things being implied but not outrightly being said, so I’m left wondering “so…. Is it that?”
Very happy to have read the book after the movie.
