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.

It's raining, and you are sitting on the terrace, with a mug of hot coffee between your palms. You are staring at the droplets that fall on the floor, trying to muffle the chatter in your head. But there is something deep in your chest that stops you from feeling content.
Reading The Garden of Evening Mists was exactly this--trying to find solace despite the palpitations in your chest.

After taking an early retirement as a judge, Yun Ling Teoh seeks solace in the Japanese gardens of Malay where she spent time helping the Japanese Emperor's former gardener finish his garden in her 20s, a time after she was the only one to be released alive from one of the Japanese camps.
This garden is where she decides to reminisce and write down her story before her memory fades, the only thing she is sure of.

This book has one of most beautiful writing I have come across; it's almost ethereal. Such beautiful quotes that will soothe your soul. And apart from this, it is also recollection of, albeit fictional to an extent, the Japanese's reign of terror in Malay, now Malaysia.

I had a three-month-long rendezvous with the book. I allowed it to envelope me in its saccharine prose and sour history, the latter often making me keep it on the side because I didn't feel the need to know 'what's next?'. It did get a tad slow, especially as it's laced with melancholy, but perseverance led to me finishing my first ever Malaysian literature.

Read it when you want something slow and soothing. Keep it aside when you want to, because you will get back to it. The book has such a power.

‘We might be suffering from different illnesses, but it means the same thing in the end, doesn’t it? Our memories are dying.’ says Yun Ling. More than anything else, this book is an ode to memory. 

The descriptions of the natural setting were very detailed and often very
poetic but at times, personally, I felt like they were a bit too much, both in terms of quantity/length and in terms of overuse of similies (I get that similes are nice but enough is enough).

I think there were also too many of what I would call "explanation sections", basically sections that feel more like an infodump about a certain topic (for example gardening practices or the art of tattoos) and they do tend to stick out a bit too much and take you out of the narrative flow.

Also, sometimes I found the time jumps in the narrative a bit confusing and it took me a little bit to re-orient myself and place the episode within the story's timeline. 

I struggled a bit to connect with the main characters (by the way, I don't know if I find the romantic aspect of their relationship really well-developed on the page and convincing) and, at times, I was actually more drawn towards secondary characters (such as the storyline of Tatsuji).

The story was interesting enough for me to want to keep reading until the end but it didn't really captivate me completely. I think the section narrating the experience of the internment camp, though one of the most harrowing, was also the most moving and impactful.

Historical fiction about the aftermath of World War II in Malaysia. I originally picked this up because a rec list mentioned the lush descriptions, and I was briefly in Cameron Highlands in 2018 and thought going back for a virtual visit sounded amazing. I got what I was looking for and a whole lot more besides. It was completely lovely--nuanced, complicated, hopeful, and also devastating.

The Garden of Evening Mists weaves back and forth between past and a late '90s present. In the "present" strand, Judge Teoh Yun Ling has just retired after receiving a serious medical diagnosis and heads back to Cameron Highlands for the first time in 40 years to meet with an art historian interested in the work of her late mentor Nakamura Aritomo, a famous gardener and woodblock print artist. In the "past" strand, it's 1949, and Yun Ling attempts to commission Aritomo to create a garden in memory of her sister who died in a wartime slave labor camp. Aritomo refuses the commission but offers Yun Ling an apprenticeship so that she can create her own garden. 

That's the plot. In practice, this means that the book is about 50% gorgeous descriptions of gardens, tea plantations, and jungles and about 50% flawed, complicated, traumatized people attempting to heal and have relationships with other flawed, complicated, traumatized people. It's thoughtful and moving but also very heavy. 

It snuck up on me and wove a quiet, hypnotic spell. It took me almost a week to read the first half and then I rushed through the second half in just a few days. Tan Twan Eng has such compassion for his characters, even as he refuses to let them off the hook for anything. He's also uncommonly good at writing women; I rolled my eyes a bit about the reveal of Yun Ling's romantic past (and maintain that the book would have been stronger and more interesting without that element), but I found her voice and character completely believable, both as a woman about my age and as a much older woman. I have complicated feelings about the ending, but again, it felt completely in character.