The Strangeness of Beauty [Paperback]

Lydia Yuri Minatoya (Author)

Book Description

Series: Norton Paperback Fiction | Publication Date: January 2001

"Minatoya offers a tenderly packaged gift. Unwrapping it is a pleasure."—Austin Chronicle

A quietly daring exploration of art, family, culture, and conscience, as three generations of women, American and Japanese, face a strained reunion in pre-World War II Japan. Etsuko and her six-year-old motherless niece return from jazz-age Seattle to the ancient Japanese household of Etsuko’s mysterious samurai mother. With Japanese militarism mounting, the women must learn to make peace in an absorbing tale where mothers are childless, warriors are pacifists, and beauty is found in the common and the small. "How sad it was to finish Lydia Minatoya’s first novel. She allowed me to live inside the sensibilities of three generations of achingly engaging Japanese women and I did not want to let them go. The Strangeness of Beauty is a strange and beautiful work of art."—Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize-winning author

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

At first blush, Lydia Minatoya's novel The Strangeness of Beauty would seem to be pretty standard fare: three generations of Japanese women struggle to understand and love one another. Sounds like generic women's fiction, but in Minatoya's hands, it becomes something quietly distinctive. Minatoya has a taste for the in-between. In this, her first novel, mothers are not mothers, Americans are Japanese, and warriors are pacifists.

Etsuko and her sister Naomi move with their respective husbands from Kobe to Seattle in the 1920s. When Naomi dies in childbirth, the widowed Etsuko becomes the baby's surrogate mother. The two return to Japan, where the girl, Hanae, can receive the education in subtleties that is her heritage as a member of a samurai family. The young American girl finds the chores and trials of samurai life enraging. "Take sweeping the garden path with a light bamboo broom: the point isn't just to clear off debris. Designed to develop dedication and spiritual depth, the real task is in repeating the activity--morning and dusk, over and over, for decades--until she learns to leave light, flowing impressions on the soft surface earth."

Just as patiently, Etsuko and Hanae must learn the secrets of their family. There's quite a bit of familial breast-beating, sure, but it's leavened by the perspective of Etsuko, a bumbling, sweet-tempered antiheroine of a narrator. The book comes alive as the two women, trapped in the liminal state of exile, neither American nor Japanese, learn to wrest the best from both worlds. As Japan teeters on the brink of war, Etsuko and Hanae apply their samurai-warrior sense of honor to fighting for peace. Minatoya (author of the acclaimed memoir Talking to High Monks in the Snow) never settles for black or white. She always strives for that more difficult place: the gray area. --Claire Dederer --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

The autobiography, or "I-story," of Etsuko Sone is the basis of this lyrical first novel by Minatoya, herself author of the memoir Talking to Monks in the Snow. Etsuko emigrates from Kobe to Seattle in 1918 with her husband, Tadoa, a kite maker who dreams of a career with Boeing; instead, he settles for a job on a fishing boat, and soon drowns. Several years later, Etsuko's sister dies in childbirth, and Etsuko helps raise the baby, Hanae, whose dentist father is a gambler and an ace on the Japanese three-cushion pool circuit. When Hanae is six and anti-Japanese sentiment is on the increase in the U. S., Etsuko is persuaded to take her back to Japan for a traditional upbringing in the house of Fuji. Etsuko has never herself lived in her family's home, having been cast out as an infant by a mother still reeling from the death of her firstborn son. Although she initially feels that she belongs in neither country, Etsuko comes to terms with her past and present, finally finding her purpose as Hanae prepares for upper-school graduation and the country prepares for war with China. Minatoya's unadorned prose has the evocative suggestibility of a Japanese print, and Etsuko's incisive, often wry observations resemble resonant lines of haiku. Ironically, the problems Etsuko identifies as inherent to the "I-story"(self-absorption, narrowness, oblique indirection, dullness) are not entirely avoided here, however artful Etsuko's looping narrative. But they are present in the novel only occasionally and are more than offset by the richly detailed multigenerational and multicultural story. With candor, Minatoya analyzes the qualities ("eloquent silence, poetic hindsight, conversation crafted with the masked formality of actors performing ancient Noh theater") that make life possible in crowded Japan, but seem "ridiculous" in America. While sometimes weighted down by bald passages of history, this highly unusual story offers valuable insights into Japanese culture. Agent, Sally Woford-Girand. (June)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (January 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393321401
• ISBN-13: 978-0393321401
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.3 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #769,394 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful., April 27, 2001

By 

Meg Brunner (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Strangeness of Beauty (Paperback)

Absolutely beautiful novel about three generations of Japanese women. When Etsuko's sister Naomi dies during childbirth in Seattle, Etsuko takes on the role of mother to the baby, Hanae. After a few years of American life together, Hanae's father decides it's time to send both Hanae and Etsuko back to Japan, so Hanae can learn about her heritage and get to know her maternal grandmother, Chie. The three women, a Japanese woman from a prestigious samurai family (Chie), her ignored American-immigrant daughter (Etsuko), and her American-born granddaughter (Hanae), learn much about each other and the world during their turbulent years together. The setting is pre-World War II Japan, providing not only an incredible background, but the means for a fascinating history lesson as well. The characters are unique, intense, and real. And their interactions (both with each other and with their countries) are some of the most moving demonstrations of emotion I've encountered in a novel in some time. My fiance gave me this book for Valentine's Day, saying he thought it sounded like a book I might enjoy (and he knows how much a good book can impact me) -- I found it absolutely amazing that he was so right on. While a book might not sound like the most romantic of gifts, it sure says a lot about him that he knew me so well he was able to pick out a book I not only couldn't put down, but felt moved to copy passages out of as well. Highly, HIGHLY recommended! (And, boy, am I marrying well or what?)

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A beautiful tale, October 26, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Strangeness of Beauty: A Novel (Hardcover)

An extraordinarily beautiful story, which is serene in it's simplicity of atmosphere, yet also contains intense emotion, and characters who are not always the way they seem. Written in a way that feels very real, with wonderful descriptions. Highly recomended!

13 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars IS BEAUTY REALLY STRANGE?, May 28, 2000

By 

Nancy Martin (Pennsylvania (orig. NY)) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Strangeness of Beauty: A Novel (Hardcover)

This novel, which spans from 1922 to 1939 in both America (Seattle) and Japan, attempts to tell the I-story (Japanese for autobiography) of Etsuko Sone -- a woman who has seen much sadness by the time she is in her twenties. Through her I-story, we learn that she was given away at birth by her mother Chie who is in a serious state of depression after losing her first born son in infancy. Etsuko is brought up by a farming family and when she learns of her true heritage, in the House of Fuji, it is her decision to remain with the parents who have raised her and not to return to her biological mother. Love brings Etsuko to Seattle where she is subsequently followed by her sister Naomi who intends to marry the man she loves in Seattle. All is well until Naomi dies in childbirth and Etsuko is left to raise and love Naomi's daughter Hanae. All Etsuko has ever wanted in life is to be a good wife and a good mother. The following years will show Etsuko's desire to be the best mother for Hanae as well as trying to reconnect with the mother who gave her away at birth. Her mother, Chie, will eventually teach her to find her own purpose in life and not to depend on someone else for her happiness. Therein lies the "strangeness in beauty" -- turn your uncertainty into adventure and know that beauty can be found in what's common and small.