The Garden of Evening Mists follows Yun Ling, the lone survivor of a Japanese internment camp who went on to study law and then prosecuted Japanese war criminals. Her desire to create a Japanese garden in memory of her sister brought her into the orbit of Aritomo, the exiled former gardener of the Emperor of Japan, and forms the core of this novel. I was hooked from the opening line - "On a mountain above the clouds once lived a man who had been the gardener of the Emperor of Japan" - and my interest never let up. The writing was gorgeous, lushly atmospheric in places, especially when evoking the Malayan highlands, but more sparse and austere in others, which was in keeping with the protagonist's demeanor. The characters were well-developed, complex, morally ambiguous, and somewhat enigmatic - but in a way that felt authentic rather than manipualtive. This was a character driven novel, slow paced and discursive, which gave the novel a real depth and richness. As well as Malayan history, particularly the Malayan Emergency, in-depth information on a host of other subjects, including tea plantations, archery, Zen philosophy, tea ceremonies, colonialism, and Japanese tattoos was incorporated. I liked the way it left me with things to think about, most natably the juxtaposotion of beauty and brutality. The book was sometimes a little structurally challenging in the way it moved between the three main timelines - WWII, the 1950s when Yun Ling was trying to build the garden, and the 1980s when she was having health problems and returned to the highlands to make sense of her past and write down her memories before she no longer could. Any effort involved in settling into the story was well rewarded, and this book has left me keen to read Tan's debut novel, The Gift Of Rain, the one of his three I've yet to read. 

Beautifullll book. Loved the writing, very poetic and calming. A book that you can read in the summer and romanticise nature.

Every line of this book felt like a poem in itself, the descriptive language was like that of nothing I have encountered before. I left the book feeling like it changed me, and I can't recommend it enough to people looking for a sincere book about memory and processing pain.

I tend to be too upset by books about prisoner of war camps and other atrocities of war to enjoy them, but this was very skilfully written and quite beautiful. I enjoyed how the story moved between time periods and didn't reveal too much too soon.