Customer Reviews

The Tale of Murasaki

5 star:		(28)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

At long last, a gorgeously written book that you can trust to give you a living sense of being inside the head of a fascinating Japanese female character. Lady Murasaki was a real court lady in 11th century Japan, credited with writing the world's first novel, The Tale of Genji. From the beginning when she is a young girl in her father's house, hoping for an invitation to serve a court and making ups tories about it, we are seeing through her eyes an amazing world. Everything about it is fundamentally different from ours--the architecture that reflects and shapes social life; the eleborate rituals that stem from a naive animism; the clothing, every detail of which has significance; the skill required of every courtier to communicate in on-the-spot elegant poetry. But especially seductive is Murasaki's emotional life. The feelings are universal: desire, love, ambition, hostility, motherhood, pride--but the way they must be expressed and the significance accorded them in Japanese society are amazingly different. Through Dalby's skill at bringing up just the right psychological cues from beneath the stylized social surface, we fall in with Murasaki's point of view, her sense of time, her endurance of loss, her choices in times of crisis and despair. Her lovers, both male and female, her revered father, her worthless brother, and beloved daughter are as distinct and real as she. This book could only have been written by a woman who is also a scholar with an intimate knowledge of things Japanese, a mother, and an artist. Dalby has brought all these sensibilities together in a masterpiece.

"The Tale of Murasaki" is an amazing book, it is intriguing, spell-binding and contains an athmosphere of 11th Century Japan so believable that you will find yourself completely absorbed by it. Liza Crihfield Dalby has managed to weave in Murasaki's poetry with the story in the most beautiful way, and make it all make sense. Murasaki comes to life in this diary style book, and by the time you reach the end of it, it feels as if you know her [Murasaki] personally. The book contains so much "cultural knowledge", that it gives you an insight to 11th Century Japanese religious beliefs and ceremonies, social structure, imperial court life, clothing, rural as well as urban life, social life... If you liked Geisha, by the same author, or The Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden, this is the book for you. But I also recommend this book to anyone with an interest for Japanese culture, history and/or poetry. This book is pure beauty.

The picture that Liza Dalby paints of Murasaki Shikibu and her world is intriguing -- flawed, but still captivating, if only for the sheer magnificence and ornate beauty of Heian culture that Dalby expertly conjures up.

Dalby's knowledge of the nuances of Japanese history, language, and culture is wonderfully thorough, thus bringing a deeper dimension to the fictionalized story of this amazing woman poet and author. The structure of the novel -- elegantly titled chapters interspersed with beautiful waka and images/stories from "The Tale of Genji" itself -- is quite enjoyable as well. Admittedly, Dalby's writing style sometimes becomes overly elaborate, and the sheer amount of information presented (it even spills over into footnotes) does get excessive at certain points, unfortunately bogging down the plot and characterization.

However, for every slow bit, there also exists a lovely gem -- a witty joke, perhaps, a bit of brilliant imagery, or a marvelously rendered scene. For all its weaknesses, "The Tale of Murasaki" is still a wonderful book, for the glimpse it allows us into Murasaki's impossibly beautiful, vanished Japan.

If you were told a book was about a culture that communicated in 5 line poetry, who's women painted their teeth black, had no moral problem with casual sex but felt violated if a man saw their face, a culture who believed all negative emotions & illness were caused by wandering spirits, you would be pretty sure that book was science fiction, right? "The Tale of Murasaki" is that book, & it is most definitely NOT science fiction!

In "The Tale of Murasaki", Liza Dalby has recreated a society so completely alien to Western minds that it seems otherwordly. Yet, so vivid is this recreation that the reader is often surprised to look up at walls rather than rice-paper screens! Her descriptions of life in a society based upon the appreciation of beauty is wonderful; gardens that have been dust for a thousand years bloom again in this novel. In the Heien culture of 10th & 11th century Japan, people of the upper classes communicated in a 5-line poetry form called "waka". Dalby skillfully uses the actual waka's written by Murasaki thruout the novel to express moods & illuminate her character's motivations. She also weaves into this novel the actual diary excerpts that still exist from this mysterious woman, & does it so seamlessly that it's nearly impossible to tell where quotation ends & invention begins!

Additionally, Ms. Dalby succeeds in one of the most difficult tasks a writer faces: she successfully ages her protagonist so that the character at 37 is more thoughtful & mature than the character at 17. Many celebrated novelists fail at this, but Dalby shows us Murasaki's growth naturally & beautifully.

The only flaw this reader found is an assumed familiarity with ancient Japanese political systems & religious symbolism. Not being sure what the significance of "the Lotus Sutra" is in Buddhism, I have no way of understanding why the characters are endlessly copying this on the back of letters or diary entries. Nor did this reader understand the family inter-relationships amongst the Japanese nobility of the period. However, these gaps serve only to inspire further research on the part of the reader. I'm sure I'm not the only person who will finish "The Tale of Murasaki" & then head to the library to learn more about 11th century Japan. Liza Dalby has done a marvelous job in this book!

I'm sure that anyone who reads this book will find it just as entertaining as I did, if not more. Liza Dalby illustrates in beautiful detail the lifestyle that Murasaki and the nobles at the courts and at the palaces led during this period of Japan. She brings Murasaki Shikibu to life through the pages of The Tale of Murasaki: the ceremonies and rituals, the kinds of foods and the fashion among the women at court. I found the manner in which Dalby writes Murasaki's life to be very delightful. Murasaki Shikibu might be the first to write a novel, such as the Tales of Genji, but she is also a woman and a smart one at that. Dalby does a wonderful job at piecing together the life of this ancient writer.

Firstly,I'd like to caution potential readers to be in the right frame of mind before attempting this book.If you're feeling hurried,hassled or even slightly frenetic,put it aside until you are calmer. This tale of court life in Japan in the 11th century is not to be rushed.The prose is poetry,the tiny lines of poetry which occur frequently are like music-tinkly sounds like mini waterfalls .It's a collection of beautiful word pictures mainly describing scenes in nature and the colours of beautiful fabrics which also reflect the hues of trees,flowers and mosses. A gem of a book,beautiful and real.

If you are at all interested in Japanese history, or Japanese people, this is the book to read. Liza Dalby's insight of Japanese women of this period and class is exquisite. The detail is incredibly rich. You can almost smell, taste and touch the life of Murasaki. It was interesting to read the inner thoughts of a Japanese woman who typically would not ever reveal feelings this private. She was a remarkable woman. Thank you Ms. Dalby for a wonderful addition to my library.

Anyone who has ever itched to hear more about the mysterious Lady Murasaki will adore this gorgeous and clever novel. Not only does Dalby illustrate her vast knowledge of Japanese culture, but she also displays her incredible talent to weave history and fiction in a most readable fashion. Dalby knits Lady Murasaki's own poems and memories (recorded in the famous court lady's diary) into a story which curiously and wonderfully parallels The Tale of Genji, while presenting a guess at what her life may have been like. The result is a work of fiction which is artistic, poignant and spiritual; I couldn't put it down.

A year ago, when I read the Tale of Genji, I viewed it as relatively "inaccessible," although the stories themselves were ornate and elegant. I couldn't help but feel that eleventh-century Japan, compared to the modern U.S.A., was a "Willow World" where women lived behind screens; where practices bordering on rape and child-stealing were seemingly tolerated; where one's skill at poetic composition affected practically everyone's perception of him or her; and where homosexuality was apparently not a great concern. It seemed that Genji's world, to the extent that it reflected upper-class life in Heian Japan, placed value upon, and deemed as important, very little that an "average" American in 2000 would value or deem important.

The Tale of Murasaki manages to infer, from the limited source materials available, much that is plausible about Lady Murasaki's life, especially her youth and her writing career. Its "apocrypha" are infused with as much insight as can be mustered 1000 years later. An example: why wouldn't Lady Murasaki have been seen by her peers as almost a freak of nature for knowing Chinese better than, say, her brother did?

Think of reading The Tale of Murasaki as a "yin" experience to offset the "yang" of reading The Tale of Genji as a unit by itself. For example, one plausible reason why Genji himself would simply fade away as a character in the Tale of Genji could be that The Tale of Genji was probably a series of "episodes" written over time for different reasons, and for a different readership, than a unitary novel. If Lady Murasaki indeed wrote Genji out of those stories to assure freshness in her writing, or as a way to rid herself of pressure to conform him to the expectations of her public, who are we to criticize her?

The Tale of Murasaki also posits how Lady Murasaki might have come up with a Genji in the first place. In a world where women were not given much in terms of practical power over their own lives, it would make sense for a woman to envision a fictional man who would be an ideal scholar, entertainer, and lover. Although we may never know precisely in what manner, and why, such an idealized man was brought to paper, to trace The Tale of Genji's chapters from a single seed in adolescence, such as entertaining a friend, is just as natural as attributing a rock music star's taking up the harmonica, scat singing, or electric guitar as a teenager to a desire to impress his peers.

In short, I really enjoyed reading The Tale of Murasaki. I found myself intrigued and entertained by a realistic, yet "accessible," story of an exceptional eleventh-century woman. I feel like I have come to love both "Tales."

Liza Dalby, author of Geisha, has written another breathtaking, enchanting book. This is her part imagined, part meticulously researched story of Murasaki, author of Tale of Genji, the world's first novel. Particularly for writers, this book will delight readers with it's vivid descriptions of 11th century Japan, the intrigues of court gossip and political manuveurings, and reflections on writing and life. I would recommend it to anyone interested in memoir, Japan, writing or historical fiction. ...