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. 

“Are all of us the same, I wonder, navigating our lives by interpreting the silences between words spoken, analysing the returning echoes of our memory in order to chart the terrain, in order to make sense of the world around us?”

This is a beautiful and complex story exploring one woman’s experience in a Japanese POW camp and her life after, and how her sisters life is interwoven to hers. 

Despite being possibly the most challenging work of fiction I have ever read and got a little frustrated in the first half due to the narrative being difficult to follow, it is so worth sticking it out as the final third is phenomenal. A very unusual and thought provoking novel. 

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. 

I'm really not sure if I like this book or not. I think I did - it was a very challenging read, both in terms of the subject matter and characters, but also just from the formatting of the book. I believe this was intentional, as a way to convey the turmoil and confusion felt by the characters. It was a much heavier read than I was prepared for, but I am glad I read it. There aren't many books on this subject, and it is an important one.

I had my moments with this book. The storytelling of Yugiri and the Cameron Highlands was written impeccably, and I must admit, did seem otherworldly. A lot of the imagery was poetic, and I thoroughly enjoyed it when these places were described in detail. I also loved the differentiation between the characters, the accents really came to life on the page and I could hear each one clearly and distinctly. More often than not, however, I struggled to even finish a page. It was a combination of everything, the narrator having this holier-than-thou attitude was so offputting that it genuinely frustrated me - and it wasn't even over the Japanese guards who had taken her to the slave labour camp, it was over everyone. I think there were two characters where this wasn't the case, her sister and Aritomo. It was also some of the actual plot. At times, I genuinely asked myself why what I was reading was relevant - it added nothing to the story, and just seemed like it was filler. I enjoyed bits of it, but would I recommend it? Not necessarily.