Customer Reviews

Chorus of Mushrooms (Nunatak Fiction)

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The first Novel from the Canadian-Japanese author Hiromi Goto.
The novel tells the story of three generations of Japanese Canadian women lives in Canada, who seeks their special identity: the grandma who refuses to give up from her Japanese roots (and who hides salted squid in her pockets...), her daughter Kaiku who wants to be "real" Canadian and therefore refuses to speak Japanese, and the grandchild, Murial-Morasaki who is in a quest for her Japanese roots and who struggles to find a cultural identity somewhere between the two.
This vivid life (and love) story is integrated with Japanese folk legends.
I found it very warm, exquisite and honest, sometimes amusing and sometimes very mellow and sad. Great first novel and very mature.
The book won the Commonwealth Writer's Prize for Best First Book.

Chorus of Mushrooms really captures the sense of conflict that is felt by those who feel compelled to "fit in" to a new culture, and the effects that this can have on other members of the family. It deals brilliantly with the notion of individual and collective hi/stories, and is one of the best books I've read in a while.

This story of three generations of Japanese Canadian women in rural Alberta relates the immigrant experience through the conflict between three incredible women--a grandmother who will not speak English, a daughter who will not speak Japanese, and a granddaughter torn between the two extremes and struggling with her identity as a Japanese Canadian. It also deals with the characters' struggle to shape their environments and establish themselves in their not-so-new community. In their adopted country, they make new accomodations not only to the past but to each other.

This is a story about three generations of Japanese-Canadian "Tonkatsu" family. Grandma Naoe, daughter Keiko, and granddaughter Muriel-Murasaki.
Obaachan(grandma) tells old Japanese folk tales to mago-daughter Murasaki, who doesn't understand her grandma's Japanese well, but gets it somehow, while Keiko refuses all the Japanese things. So they have some trouble with their communication each other. But after Naoe had set out on a sudden journey, they, each of them, gradually found their identity through the (especially Japanese) food. Some Japanese immitation sounds (such as sara-sara, zuru-zuru) are effectively used.

I very much approve of Goto-san's belief; There are people who say that eating is only a superficial means of understanding of a different culture.....You haven't learned anything at all. I say that's a lie. What can be more basic than food itself ?
And of course, "Tonkatsu (guess what !)" is yummy. :-))

This is one of the best books I have ever read. The agony and joy of intergenerational struggles, intensified by immigrant worries, comes through on every page. Readers follow Murasaki's journey to know her grandmother's story through such imaginative contours. Canadian or not, anyone can identify with an adolescent's awkwardness; and everyone stands to learn from the struggle against racism that emerges on the Canadian prairies.

Find out the beauty of tradition in the words of Obachan. Learn more about what it is to be a Japanese in Canada and what it is for a Canadian to be of Japanese descent. Great book, well written, revealing and touching.

Anyone who's had a grandparent or any relative from a different generation and/or country surely must read this. The things we don't understand about those folks and also the things we'd never guess about them come dancing out of these pages.