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Snow : A Novel [Hardcover]

Maxence Fermine (Author)
4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)


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Book Description

December 24, 2002

Yuko Akita had two passions.
Haiku.
And snow.

An international bestseller,Snow is "a novel that reads like a poem. Limpid, delicate, and pure like its title."* In nineteenth-century Japan, a young haiku poet named Yuko journeys through snow-covered mountains on a quest for art and finds love instead. Maxence Fermine's prose is hypnotic, and his sensuous love story envelops you as if you?re wrapped in one of his dreams with your eyes wide open.

Yuko has all the makings of greatness, but must learn to reach beyond the silent starkness of snow, his ultimate inspiration, to find the color pulsing through life. Color enhanced by love, without which he will remain invisible to the world. On his journey to enlightenment he learns how fragile the balance of life can be through the tragic story of his blind master, Soseki, and the love of his life, a French tightrope walker named Snow. Love and art finally converge in a most startling and exquisite way when a special young woman opens Yuko's heart to the purest of color and light.

*Gala (Italy)


Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Fermine meditates on poetry, love and art in this elegant love story-cum-parable set in Japan in the late 19th century. Delicate, sensitive Yuko Akita informs his father that he wishes to become a poet so that he can "learn to watch the passing of time." Despite his father's skepticism, Akita is soon writing beautiful haiku based on his obsession with snow. Seeking to help advance the boy's career, his father invites the imperial court poet to evaluate Yuko's work; after acknowledging the boy's talent, the poet tells Akita that he needs to study other art forms. Akita embarks on a journey to study with master artist Soseki; along the way he comes upon a strikingly beautiful European woman frozen into a massive chunk of ice. The elderly Soseki begins teaching Akita, and the narrative shifts to focus on the older artist, a former samurai who left the military after being wounded and married a beautiful French tightrope walker named Snow. The happy couple had a daughter, but after raising the girl Snow grew restless. She went back to tightrope walking, and died in an accident while performing. Fermine's pristine prose shimmers in English translation, and the deceptively simple story flows smoothly. The final twist involving Akita and Snow's daughter is predictable, but the ethereal prose and Fermine's graceful delivery of bits of wisdom make this brief fiction a memorable read.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

French author Fermine's concise romantic tale emulates the airiness and grace of haiku, the form of poetry 17-year-old Yuko Akita, a meditative soul drawn to the quiet beauty of snow, wants to devote himself to writing. The year is 1884, the setting is northern Japan, and the conflict is with Yuko's father, who is not pleased with his son's obsessions with snow and the color white, or his decision to become a poet. He is, therefore, gratified when the Imperial Poet recommends the master Soseki, an artist who, he assures the aspiring young poet, will teach him about color. Yuko sets out on an arduous journey, in the classic fairy-tale mode, and nearly dies in a blizzard but is saved by a vision of a beautiful white woman in a coffin of ice. He is puzzled to find that the man who is to teach him about color is blind, and astonished to learn that Soseki has long been mourning the death of his wife, a beautiful European tightrope walker. Fermine's ethereal, Zen-like fable is exquisite. Simply lovely. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 112 pages
  • Publisher: Atria Books (December 24, 2002)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 074345684X
  • ISBN-13: 978-0743456845
  • Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 4.5 x 0.5 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces
  • Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #515,807 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

7 Reviews
5 star:
 (4)
4 star:
 (2)
3 star:    (0)
2 star:
 (1)
1 star:    (0)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.3 out of 5 stars (7 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars The finest book I ever read..., December 28, 2007
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This review is from: Snow : A Novel (Hardcover)
I read this book in french when it first came out and found it to be one of the most charming and delicately written books I know of till today. It is as simple as a haiku but with a touching and romantic story behind it...
I loved it and recommend you to read it...it touched my heart.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A Haiku in Itself, May 23, 2007
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Snow : A Novel (Hardcover)
Haiku are practically impossible to describe. A haiku has to convey an emotional state both succintly and artfully. SNOW is a novel about the transformation into a haijin, the living of haiku as a way of life and of love. In the beginning, the protagonist has the way of life and the obsession. But he cannot truly master his art without love which brings colour to the whitest of snow. Scientifically, white has all the colours of the visible light spectrum, so on another level, the novel explores the nature of whiteness and of light. SNOW is a guide for readers and writers of haiku in novel (and a novel!) form. Note: haiku no longer are required to have 17 syllables for various reasons available on a plethora of websites.
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5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars The beauty of a snowflake, April 3, 2003
This review is from: Snow : A Novel (Hardcover)
Yuko Akita, seventeen and living in the south of Japan in 1884, is nearing the end of his boyhood. It's time for him to choose a vocation. Warrior or monk. He chooses to be a poet. Says his father, "Poetry is not a profession. It is a way of passing the time. Poems are like water. Like this river," and Yuko says, "That is just what I want to do. To learn to watch the passing of time." Each if Yuko's poems is pure and colorless, each one is about snow. The Emperor's Imperial Poet is not satisfied. They are too white for him. So he sends Yuko to study color with Soseki, a blind old artist who was once in love with a tightrope walker ... named Snow.

As the book jacket states, SNOW reads like a long, intensely lucid poem. Not one word is wasted. Although the story itself is not all that remarkable and won't surprise the aware reader, the method used to tell it sets it apart from the ordinary. By the end I had tears in my eyes. There is even a touch of humor here, along with some profound statements about both life and art.

Only 100 tiny pages long and readable in half an hour, SNOW is a remarkably beautiful, if simplistic, love story that I can highly recommend.

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Inside This Book (learn more)
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Yuko Akita had two passions. Read the first page
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Imperial Poet, Japanese Alps
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