Plum Wine [Paperback]

Angela Davis-Gardner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 27, 2007

Bottles of homemade plum wine link two worlds, two eras, and two lives through the eyes of Barbara Jefferson, a young American teaching at a Tokyo university. When her surrogate mother, Michi, dies, Barbara inherits an extraordinary gift: a tansu chest filled with bottles of homemade plum wine wrapped in sheets of rice paper covered in elegant calligraphy—one bottle for each of the last twenty years of Michi’s life.

Why did Michi leave her memoirs to Barbara, who cannot read Japanese? Seeking a translator, Barbara turns to an enigmatic pottery artist named Seiji, who will offer her a companionship as tender as it is forbidden. But as the two lovers unravel the mysteries of Michi’s life, a story that draws them through the aftermath of World War II and the hidden world of the hibakusha, Hiroshima survivors, Barbara begins to suspect that Seiji may be hiding the truth about Michi’s past—and a heartbreaking secret of his own.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. As this enthralling novel opens, Barbara Jefferson, teaching English in Japan in 1966, receives a bequest from her Japanese fellow teacher and mentor, Michiko Nakamoto, a Hiroshima survivor who has just died of cancer. Barbara's superiors arrive at her apartment bearing Michi-San's gorgeous tansu chest, filled with bottles of homemade plum wine dated by year. After a short, perfectly rendered struggle with the elder Japanese teachers over the possession of the wine, Barbara discovers that the rice paper wrappings of each bottle contain a portion of the story of Michiko's life. Barbara's path through the texts, which she cannot translate herself, forms the rest of the novel. As Barbara delves into Michi-San's life and loves, an odd triangle forms between Barbara, Michiko and Michiko's childhood friend Seiji, a man who is between the two women in age, and who translates some texts. Author of Felice and Forms of Shelter, Davis-Gardner handles the Japanese mores of the time expertly, and the dialogue spoken by non-native English speakers is pitch perfect. She quietly wows with this third novel, which features a wonderfully inventive plot and a protagonist as self-possessed as she is sensitive. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Seiji, a potter, tells Barbara, a young and lonely American teaching at a Tokyo university, that it is a tradition in Japan to write about the year past as the new year begins. This practice was cherished by Michiko, a professor who befriended Barbara, and by Michiko's mother before her, as Barbara discovers after Michiko's sudden death and surprise bequest to Barbara of a wooden chest containing bottles of plum wine, one for each year from 1939 to 1966, the present, each wrapped in paper covered with writing. Unable to read Japanese, Barbara asks Seiji to translate the papers, unaware that he and Michiko are hibakusha, Hiroshima survivors. As she and Seiji embark on a painfully complicated love affair, Barbara struggles to understand the horror of what Michiko and Seiji suffered at the hands of her countrymen while her students question her about America's escalation of the war in Vietnam. Davis-Gardner's exceptionally sensitive and enveloping novel illuminates with quiet intensity, psychological suspense, and narrative grace the obdurate divide between cultures, the collision between love and war, and, most piercingly, the horrific legacy of Hiroshima. But Davis-Gardner's ravishing tale also celebrates the solace of stories, and the transcendent bonds people form under the cruelest of circumstances. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Dial Press Trade Paperback (March 27, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385340834
• ISBN-13: 978-0385340830
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.8 x 8.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #349,673 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A moving story, sadly timeless in its message, March 28, 2006

By 

Jaizon (NH United States) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Plum Wine: A Novel (Library of American Fiction) (Hardcover)

The horrors of war continue to be repeated from generation to generation. This exceptionally well told story allows us to feel the numbing sadness that blankets the lives of survivors of the American bombing of Hiroshima. The descriptions of the bombing itself, however, almost pale beside the agonies that follow as survivors live out their lives haunted by what they have endured, shamed by the fact of their survival, and tortured by their efforts to somehow fulfill their obligation to honor those who have been lost. Angela Davis-Gardner combines the beauty of a love story with the pain the each character endures, not only relating to Hiroshima, but also to other losses and disappointments of life.

Barbara comes to Japan on a personal journey in search of the essence of her mother, during the height of the Vietnam War. The juxtaposition of World War II and the American involvement in Vietnam provides a brilliant setting for Davis-Gardner's examination of truth, honor, morality, love, and pain. Her characters are memorable and the questions she raises,sadly, continue to be highly relevant, and worthy of our contemplation. An amazing, thought-provoking, beautiful read.

21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Everything you could want from a novel, April 6, 2006

By 

BWB - See all my reviews

This review is from: Plum Wine: A Novel (Library of American Fiction) (Hardcover)

Davis-Gardner may have pulled off this year's most entertaining book with the greatest number of irons in the fire--history, culture, literature and all that, but what keeps the pages turning is a good old-fashioned mystery, a morality play of trust and betrayal, of guilt and shame and secrets, a clash of civilizations and, yeah, even I got caught up in the romance (which was steamy as a Japanese bathhouse...) I started it sort of thinking, "Here we go, another Japan book," but found I was learning all kinds of new things from different, unwritten-about perspectives. I read it in two sittings. Couldn't put it down. What a gem--I hope a major house picks up the paperback so it can get the notice it deserves.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A lovely and haunting story, February 10, 2007

By 

E. Lacey (Los Angeles, CA, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Plum Wine: A Novel (Library of American Fiction) (Hardcover)

This is a gorgeous, infectious novel that is impossible to put down. Absolutely one of the best books I've read recently.

The story follows young Barbara Jefferson, an American teaching in Japan in 1966. Michiko Nakamoto, her mentor at the university, dies and leaves Barbara a tansu chest filled with bottles of homemade plum wine, each dated with a year. Barbara finds that the chest contains a host of secrets and mysteries. She struggles to unravel the threads of Michiko's life story.

Barbara's tale is utterly compelling. First of all, the author's writing style is so lush and lovely that it gives the whole novel something of a dream-like atmosphere. Barbara comes to understand and respect Japanese culture, falls in love and discovers the horrors of Hiroshima. It's a wonderful tale that you won't soon forget. Highly recommended.