Customer Reviews

The Gardens of Kyoto

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Like the meditation gardens in Kyoto, Japan, which is the underlying metaphor to the book (in case you couldn't guess), the story of Ellen is told with subtlety and hidden shades of meaning, which the reader is invited to visit and probe.

Ellen is presumably narrating her story to her daughter. The defining event in Ellen's life is the early, barely realized love and loss of her cousin Randall, who was killed in World War II on Iwo Jima in the Pacific. It will tragically affect and color her other relationships forever, although how, is not fully revealed to the reader immediately, but discovered along the way. While Ellen is the central character, it soon becomes apparent, through other of the book's characters, that the author has a broader message in mind than Ellen's private sorrow. Slowly, we learn how war affects and sometimes ruins the people it touches.

Randall ironically has a love of Japanese culture, particularly the treasured book Gardens of Kyoto, which he bequeathes to Ellen along with his diary. It is the first of many ironies which we are invited to discover, observe, and puzzle out, including glimpses of relationships rather than the relationships themselves. With deft strokes, Kate Walbert gives us just enough information to do just that, painting her landscape and weaving her story through flashbacks and flash forwards, often in a surreal or dreamlike fashion. At times one starts to lose a sense of time and place, reality and fantasy, although Walbert always manages to bring us back. As layers of secrets unfurl, the story keeps drawing us up until the very end.

This is an accomplished first novel, at first impression deceptively simple, but leaving the reader with remembrances of lingering sadness and loss long after it is finished.

Rather than reading this book, I may have absorbed it! "The Gardens of Kyoto" is unique in plot and characterization. The tone is almost gothic, with a wonderful sense of place, as Walbert explores the cycle of lost love -- damaged men and the women who love them -- caused by war.

Serious and studious Ellen falls in love with her cousin Randall, only son born to an influential judge late in his life. A lonely boy with a passion for vocabulary words, reading encyclopedias and seeing ghosts, Randall reveals his real self to Ellen, trusting her with his secrets. Raised by a woman he later learns is not his mother in a rambling farmhouse once used by the Underground Railroad to harbor escaped slaves, Randall is sent to Okinawa after WWII and dies under circumstances equally as mysterious as the rest of his life. He bequeaths Ellen his private journal and a book about the gardens of Kyoto, Japan. The book figures prominently throughout the story, the book's subject matter a haunting symbol of life.

Years later, as a college student, Ellen meets a young soldier, Lt. Henry Rock. Henry falls for Ellen's troubled and indifferent friend, Daphne, and begins a correspondence. Intending the letters for Daphne, Ellen is the one who receives them and falls in love with the writer. After the war, Henry finds Ellen and begins an ill-fated relationship.

The book spans the 1940's and 1950's, through World War II and the Korean War. In the book, the men who survive the wars, Roger, Ellen's brother-in-law, and Henry are "damaged", so affected by their experience that they are changed forever, unreachable by those who love them.

Chapter 11 of book 5 quotes Iago, "'I am not what I am ....' We are none of us who we are." This paragraph flew out at me as soon as I read it. Everyone hides his private demons from public view. A wonderful summation of the novel.

This is a starkly written novel, and perhaps it is this starkness that provokes the emotions. As I read this, I truly did hurt for Ellen and her losses. I felt Randall's isolation, Henry's disillusionment, Daphne's self-destructiveness. The minor character's, such as Randall's birth mother, Ruby, and Ellen's sisters, Rita and Betty, made brief appearances, but left big impressions. The writing and even the dust jacket are sepia-toned, but the story is so emotionally colorful that it is hard to walk away from it.

Every once in a while, a book comes along that is so stirring in its message and so elegant in its composition that you cannot wait to tell everyone you know about it. This is one of those books. Like the real gardens of Kyoto, it is quiet, subtle, and cerebral. At the same time, it is immensely powerful in effect, full of dramatic contrasts which illuminate the bedrock of life itself. The mood is contemplative and introspective, and the reader ultimately gains new insights into the nature of human relationships.

The main character, Ellen, is a young girl during the early 1940's, fascinated by her cousin Randall, a slight, sensitive boy, a few years older, that she sees only once or twice a year. Randall expands Ellen's view of the world, showing her secret rooms in his house and inviting her to share some of his intellectual curiosity about the Underground Railroad which once stopped there. The voices of these young people, each alone in many ways, speak directly to the reader and involve him/her in both the action and the values of the times. Ellen shares Randall's fear as he leaves for the World War II, where, we have discovered in the opening sentence, he is killed on Iwo Jima. He leaves Ellen a box of "treasures," including his diary and his copy of The Gardens of Kyoto, a book given to him by his mother. As the diary and book reveal Randall's family history, we also learn about Ellen's family, the relationships of the parents, their relationships with each other, Ellen's relationships with each of them, and her relationship with the father of the child to whom she is leaving the written record which constitutes this novel.

The plot is full and rich with many overlaps of time and detail as the narrative shifts from pre-World War II to Korea. The main characters are fully developed, understandable people trying to adapt to their changing world the best way they can, some more successfully than others. However fascinating the story is (and it is totally captivating), Walbert's underlying themes and their development are even more fascinating (or were to me). She illustrates, among other things, that as in Kyoto's gardens, our views of "truth" are limited by our vantage points, that we sometimes confuse shadow with reality, and that there is a universal desire among all men to find peace and serenity. This is a remarkable novel, satisfying on every level, a total pleasure to read, with insights into so many aspects of life that you will be thinking about it long after you have finished reading. Mary Whipple

With probably the best cover design of the year, this book seduced me. And while it didn't blow me away, I've found it keeps coming back to me weeks after I finished. A paen to the vaguaries of memory, it follows its narrator through a romantically charged friendship with her cousin through her strange college days and on to a post WWII romance that results in a child. We're never sure if what she's remembering is correct or colored by her losses...she's an "unreliable narrator," as we might say in English 101. But unlike some other unreliables, we care about this character and ultimately, about the book.

I must disagree with the reviewer from Cincinnati. This beautiful novel is one of the best I have read in recent months, although if Cathy was looking for a travel book about Kyoto, she would be disappointed. Kyoto and the gardens are employed as symbols of the life the narrator recounts. The chronology of the novel can be difficult but replicates the way our memories do work--not always in a linear fashion. I think that Walbert has great insight about the often illusory worlds we build for ourselves so that we can keep going. Her writing style is a joy to read.

This is a book to give to those people who lament the decadence of modern society and look longingly to a more innocent time: a time when every husband was right, every wife happy, every soldier heroic, and every girl a virgin until marriage.
Apparently, that's what social mores of the 40's and 50's insisted on. So what could you do, if your life wasn't as picture-perfect as it was supposed to be? The characters in Walberg's book face this dilemma. Some of them sacrifice their desires in order to fit in, while others die themsleves as sacrificial lambs on the altar of conformity, and the rest simply spend their lives lying about who they are.
Five characters in this book are soldiers; none fits the "hero" mold that society prescribes for them. Even the one who died on Iwo Jima was not killed in combat, but died accidentally after the fighting was over. Yet this isn't really a book about war - more about a society that worked so hard to keep up appearances, that no one was allowed to be different, or even human.
Consider the plight of the narrator's oldest sister. In one of the most poignant moments in the book, she breaks decorum by crying at the dinner table in front of the whole family, then confesses a desperate and shocking problem. Members of the family silently look to the father, waiting for his response. But Rita's problem is so far outside the bounds of what "nice people" talk about, that all he can do is mumble weak, useless platitudes at her. The pitiful thing is that he adores his daughter -- but social conventions won't let him help her, or even admit that her problem is real. When the problem leads to her death, the whole family continues to lie to eachother as if they never saw it coming. And in the ultimate victory of good etiquette, the narrator politely thanks her sister's killer just hours after Rita's death, knowing full well what he has done.
Those were the good old days? Thank God I missed them.

Confused?....I am

In writing this review, I'm not sure I enjoyed this book as thoroughly as I have others. But I am sure that I don't hate it.

The story centers on the protagonist Ellen. Early on as a child, she meets her cousin Randal. A fair boy with nice hands and red hair. It seems an attraction between these two set and there are a few moments that are a bit awkward because they were cousins. But I won't ruin the story. He goes off to fight the war (the 2nd one) and he dies, but not before giving a few letters and what not. He never said out loud how he feels, but does say that she is his main audience. It is about the middle of the book when we hit this part. She then meets Lt. Henry while at a football game. At this point she is a college student. He is not attracted to her, but rather a friend, Daphne, she brings along. He goes to Korea and asks her friend to continue a correspondence with him. She doesn't say no, but since it is hinted that she is a communist, she gives it to Ellen instead. She reads all his mail and falls in love with him. He returns and still thinks that her friend is writing to him. I won't divulge anymore of the plot, but I will tell you that at this time her minds start confusing and mixing up between Randal and this captain.

I won't deny that it isn't original. But I couldn't find anything to grasp myself into. The characters were okay, but they don't stick with you. The writing was a bit shaky and a bit confusing when you read it. But if you give it time, I suppose the story will sink in. It is the writing that makes it confusing. The transition between Henry and Randall could have been a bit smoother. The story was a bit slow. There is no external antagonist to deal with, but rather the conflict lay on the shoulder of internal conflicts of Ellen. But I feel the one reason why I could not enjoy this book was that I just didn't like the characters. I didn't like Ellen because she was so different from myself. And often I find a book more enjoyable when you relate to the characters. I did not find one character that I related too.

Overall, it is an okay book. It is rather short; around I say 200+ pages. It's a fine book to past the time with.

I finished reading this book in a couple of hours - I could not put it down! I don't really understand the point of the whole story, but the emotions I felt while reading it is what sticks in my mind. What was implied affected me more than the words on the page (as Randall says, "you had to read between the lines.") The author has a beautiful and lyrical style of writing, and I loved the way she weaved the different stories together and around each other. Randall was the most fascinating character for me. While reading the book I kept wishing I could know what he was thinking. However, since this is from Ellen's point of view, I guess he will remain a mystery figure to me. This book definitely left me wanting more.

I'm an avid reader, and this book is one of the most beautiful things I've ever had the privilage to read. Both haunting and thoughtful, lyrical and down-to-earth, it manages to paint a heartbreaking story about love; both true love and love at first sight, and how the ramifications of both can affect a person for the rest of their life. The narrator spends the course of the book struggling with her love for her departed cousin and the odd love she feels towards a man who sent her letters throughout World War Two without knowing she was the recipient.

The entire story is layed out as if it is being told to the narrator's daughter, and we come to find out that it is the explanation of this young mother's life and why she made the choices that brought her daughter about.

Kate Walbert's writing is, in a word, wistful. This is the sort of book that it's painful to reach the end of, because by the last page you feel so deeply connected to the characters you don't want to stop hearing about them. For anyone who read and enjoyed this book, I recommend Walbert's other novel, "Where She Went" -- it is written much in the style of "Gardens", and actually has a few similar plot devices.

Ellen, the narrator, gives us two sections of her life. In 1944, when she was fifteen, she fell in love with her cousin Randall, then nearing seventeen. Randall enlists in the army and is killed on Iwo Jima. He is the last soldier killed on that island, while trying to help a comrade and after the battle is already over.
Seven years later, Ellen meets Lieutenant Henry Rock who is on his way to Korea. While there, he tries to save a comrade the Viet Kong have nailed to a cross. He does return from Korea, but is mentally damaged.

The gardens of Kyoto explain the psychological side of the story. You do not go to these gardens to sit on a wooden board to look at the stones . Rather, the gardens look at you, insinuate themselves into your inner being and pervade you with their tranquillity. But there is the fifteen stone. It is hidden, you cannot see it, but you know it is there.

Randall knew before he left for the Pacific that he would not return. Henry knew that he could never forget the crucified soldier. Both unburden themselves on Ellen, who thus becomes damaged herself. She tries to get back to a solid life, and fails.

Ellen searches for the fifteen stone. She knows it is there, but she cannot see it.