The Garden of Evening Mists

Oct 08, 2012 Blair rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: booker-prize, past-and-present, read-on-kindle

The Garden of Evening Mists starts in the late 1980s, as retired judge Teoh Yun Ling returns to Yugiri, a property where she spent a period of her life almost forty years earlier, in Malaya during the Japanese occupation. Told in flashbacks as she looks back on her life, the majority of the book is devoted the events of this time. We learn that Yun Ling was the only survivor of a Japanese POW camp - a fact which, in itself, is a source of mystery, as she seems determined not to reveal how she ma...more The Garden of Evening Mists starts in the late 1980s, as retired judge Teoh Yun Ling returns to Yugiri, a property where she spent a period of her life almost forty years earlier, in Malaya during the Japanese occupation. Told in flashbacks as she looks back on her life, the majority of the book is devoted the events of this time. We learn that Yun Ling was the only survivor of a Japanese POW camp - a fact which, in itself, is a source of mystery, as she seems determined not to reveal how she managed to escape. Staying with Marcus and Emily, a pair of family friends originally from South Africa, she seeks out their neighbour Nakamura Aritomo. Formerly gardener to the Emperor of Japan (a fact which causes much moral conflict for Yun Ling), Aritomo is now living in exile and has created an authentic Japanese garden at Yugiri. Mindful of a promise made to her sister, who died in the camp, Yun Ling persuades Aritomo to tutor her so she can create a memorial garden. The story focuses on the developing relationship between Yun Ling and Aritomo, set against a backdrop of political unrest as communist rebels terrorise the surrounding estates.

I've read a few reviews of The Garden of Evening Mists which have criticised it for being dull. I can completely understand why some would think that - it's a slow-moving, descriptive book and although there are some dramatic events, it couldn't really be described as action-packed. However, I found it a very soothing read: thoughtful, reflective and intelligent. The story is a very complex one - even having finished the book, I didn't find it easy to write the summary above. There's lots of strands to the plot, lots of characters, lots of background detail, and it does require concentration, but in my opinion at least, it's worth it.

I must admit that I was occasionally frustrated by the way the narrative skirted around things rather than addressing them directly, particularly when it came to the relationships between certain characters. I didn't actually realise for quite some time (view spoiler), until a throwaway comment from Yun Ling brought it to my attention. Given the animosity and apprehension between the two at the beginning, I would really have liked to know more about how this relationship developed. I felt the main problem with the book was that it didn't explore details like this fully and often seemed to be dwelling more on external events which could have been left out of the story.

Overall, though, I really, really liked The Garden of Evening Mists. It's left a memorable impression on me - the time I spent reading it provided me with a true sense of escape. I have the author's acclaimed debut, The Gift of Rain, on my wishlist now and I'm looking forward to (hopefully) being transported and calmed once again when I read it.(less)

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Oct 08, 2012 Jill rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

For those of us who read for character – and I am one of them – the complexities of a strongly drawn narrator is typically what reigns.

How odd, then, that I was so captivated by Garden of the Evening Mist, which is in many ways about the impermanence of individuals – the subjugation of self to become in closer alignment with nature and the flow of life – and the dominance of memory.

Our narrator is retired Supreme Court Judge Teoh Yun Ling, the physically maimed sole survivor of a brutal wartime...more For those of us who read for character – and I am one of them – the complexities of a strongly drawn narrator is typically what reigns.

How odd, then, that I was so captivated by Garden of the Evening Mist, which is in many ways about the impermanence of individuals – the subjugation of self to become in closer alignment with nature and the flow of life – and the dominance of memory.

Our narrator is retired Supreme Court Judge Teoh Yun Ling, the physically maimed sole survivor of a brutal wartime camp where she served, euphemistically, as a “guest of the emperor” during the Japanese occupation of Malaysia. When we meet her, she has developed a particular type of aphasia that will soon affect her ability to communicate. “Once I lose all ability to communicate with the world outside myself, nothing will be left but what I remember. My memories will be like a sandbar, cut off from the shore by the incoming tide. For what is a person without memories? A ghost, trapped between worlds, without an identity, with no future, no past.”

It is that past, that future, and that identity that she is working to reclaim before the curtain lowers. And so we travel back with her to her past.

We learn that in the camp, she and her sister were able to withstand the mind-numbing horrors by remembering an exquisite Japanese garden in Kyoto. After the war, in tribute to her sister, Yun Ling seeks out Yugiri (the Garden of Forgetfulness), created by Nakamura Aritomo, the exiled gardener of the Emperor of Japan. He denies her request to design a tribute garden for her but does agree to take her on as an apprentice. The kinship is almost immediate: “It was odd how Aritomo’s life seemed to glance off mine; we were like two leaves falling from a tree, touching each other now and again as they spiraled on the forest floor.”

The slowly evolving plot is as contemplative as the garden itself. The discovery of how Yun Ling was able to survive and what she is hiding is for readers to discover for themselves, and that truth is hidden between the words that are spoken and the words that are kept inside of us. Or, as Yun Lang reflects, “Are all of us the same…navigating our lives by interpreting the silences between words spoken, analyzing the returning echoes of our memory in order to chart the terrain, in order to make sense of the world around us?”

In exquisitely crafted prose, TanTwan Eng renders the garden as a place of memory and forgetfulness and ultimately, of self-healing. It is a metaphor for life itself: “The garden has to reach inside you. It should change your heart sadden it, uplift it. It has to make you appreciate the impermanence of everything in life. That point in time just as the last leaf is about to drop, as the remaining petal is about to fall; that moment captures everything beautiful and sorrowful about life.”

This book – like the garden that is its subject – succeeds at capturing those elusive and impermanent truths.
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May 15, 2013 Tania rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorite-books, best

I will dance to the music of words, on more time

This exquisitely written novel had me at hello. The dedication reads:

Sonder jou sou hierdie boek dubbel so lank en halfpad so goed wees. Mag jou eie mooi taal altyd gedy.

An unexpected ode to my beautiful language.

Even without the Afrikaner influence in this book, I would still have savored every word of The Garden of Evening Mists. For me this multilayered work of historical fiction focuses on themes of love and loss and on forgiving yourself and...more

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Sep 13, 2012 Friederike Knabe rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: asia

Yugiri, meaning "Evening Mist" and a famous (in the novel) Japanese Garden, is much more than a backdrop or setting for this totally mesmerizing and haunting novel. With its creator and his former apprentice, it is at the core of events and place. Like all Japanese Gardens Yugiri offers calm and serenity for reflection and beauty for the eye by capturing nature through "shakkei", borrowed scenery, within a given space. Nakamura Aritomo, the Emperor's gardener after leaving his Japanese homeland...more Yugiri, meaning "Evening Mist" and a famous (in the novel) Japanese Garden, is much more than a backdrop or setting for this totally mesmerizing and haunting novel. With its creator and his former apprentice, it is at the core of events and place. Like all Japanese Gardens Yugiri offers calm and serenity for reflection and beauty for the eye by capturing nature through "shakkei", borrowed scenery, within a given space. Nakamura Aritomo, the Emperor's gardener after leaving his Japanese homeland in 1940, has been creating a formal Japanese garden "that is only his" in the central highlands of the Malayan Peninsula. It is a region well known for its extensive tea plantations, seen on the cover of the book, that reach into to mountainous rainforest beyond. The extraordinarily beautiful landscape has something mysterious, spiritual and otherworldly about it. Aritomo, placing himself clearly into the ancient tradition of formal Japanese garden design principles, appears to live himself in a different world, working, meditating, walking, secluded in his garden...

Retired Supreme Court Judge in Kuala Lumpur, Yun Ling Teoh, of Chinese-Malay background, returns to Yugiri, the garden "above the clouds", thirty four years after she had seen it for the last time. The "stillness of the mountain awakens" her again; the "depth of the silence" that Yugiri represents wraps around her like a protective delicate silk shawl. Why does she return? Tan Twan Eng gives Yun Ling the voice to tell the story of her life, often in flashbacks, from the time she arrived for the first time at Cameron Highlands, the nearby tea plantation, owned by family friends, and where she hoped to meet Aritomo, until now that she feels age and illness making her return visit an urgent need. It a quest to rekindle and revive memories of the past, and, hopefully, to find answers to questions that have been with her for decades.

Above all, Yun Ling carries the loving memory of her sister, an avid student of Japanese Gardens, who did not survive the terrible conditions in a labour camp where both had been imprisoned during the Japanese occupation of Malaya (1942-45). Yun Ling had promised to build a garden for her sister if she escapes. After the war she, the sole survivor, tried to locate the notorious camp, but nobody seemed to know anything about it. Her ordeal and search for the truth also motivated her to become a prosecutor of Japanese war criminals. Emotions were buried deep inside her. "Emptiness: it appealed to me, the possibility of ridding myself of everything I had seen and heard and lived through". Meeting Aritomo, hostility and suspicion between the war victim and the Japanese gardener are difficult barriers to overcome. Yet, the mostly silent Mr. Nakamura is the best gardener there is for Yun Ling's project. Not surprisingly, he refuses to comply with her request to design her sister's garden. Instead, he offers her to become his apprentice for some months to learn all about designing it herself.

Tan Twan Eng's exquisitely conceived and written novel is captivating on different levels. On the one hand, he entrances your imagination with his detailed descriptions of Yugiri, its luscious colours, its ambiance and architectural features. We learn much about Japanese traditional gardens and its varied purposes. The author's gentle and delicate exploration of the slowly intensifying relationship between Aritomo and Yun Ling also enables Yun Ling's eventually telling her story about life under Japanese occupation. Her account of post-war civil strife before independence of Malaysia in 1963 and those involving others living near or passing through Yugiri are important and valuable additions. Nothing is clear-cut, ambiguities surround all central characters; some have even crossed paths before... and might again. How many questions will be answered or mysteries solved is less the concern than what is learned in human terms, in terms of memory, forgetting and, above all, understanding and forgiving.
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Jan 01, 2013 Chrissie rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: malaysia, hf, audio, flora, not-finished, disliked

I have listened to half of this book. I dislike it. It is contrived and unbelievable. The book tries to do too much, and thus does nothing well. The characters do not pull you in; they stay there flat between the pages of the book.

IF you decide you DO want to read it, do not pick the audiobook narrated by Anna Bentinck!!!!! The book is set in three different time periods. This is more confusing in an audiobook than in a paper book. I do NOT like the narration. There are Chinese and Japanese cha...more I have listened to half of this book. I dislike it. It is contrived and unbelievable. The book tries to do too much, and thus does nothing well. The characters do not pull you in; they stay there flat between the pages of the book.

IF you decide you DO want to read it, do not pick the audiobook narrated by Anna Bentinck!!!!! The book is set in three different time periods. This is more confusing in an audiobook than in a paper book. I do NOT like the narration. There are Chinese and Japanese characters. When all but one of them speaks, you will cringe. Ask yourself to mimic a Chinese person trying to speak English. THAT is what you have to listen to here. It may be typically correct, but it is ever so unpleasant.

Oh, and I keep falling asleep as I listen to this book! Some lines are poetic and beautiful, but essentially lulling. I have started over several times, but each time I fall asleep!

Then I got mad, and went back again. But it was so:
1. boring (I HAVE listened to this.)
2. and confusing (Which time period am I in now?)
3. and annoying (Ugh, must I listen to this pigeon-English?)
4. and contrived (Romance, hidden treasure, murder, internment camps, Communist terrorists....)
5. and unbelievable (Central figure, the sole survivor of a Japanese Internment camp, agrees to become an apprentice gardener to a famed Japanese gardener, the gardener of Emperor Hirohito! And the details make it even more unbelievable. She manages to lift huge stones, agrees to remove her gloves that protect her hands that were damaged in the camp so she can feel the e-a-r-t-h..... Yup, not only unbelievable, but melodramatic too. I forgot to mention the serious medical problem.)

So I am stubborn. I cannot just quit this book, can I? I went then to Wikipedia and looked it up. What is ahead of me? OMG, it is not going to get more believable. No, I cannot take this anymore! This book goes back to Audible! I LOVE that Audible lets you return books.

The good things: some pretty lines and a teeny bit taught about Japanese gardens. They ARE truly magnificent. Should I give this book two stars? How can I do that if I absolutely cannot finish it?!
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Dec 10, 2012 Kara rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: animals-die, for-review, i-cried, literary, the-tough-stuff, ww2

Tough review incoming! I don't even know where to start. There were a lot of things I liked about The Garden of Evening Mists, but there were also some things that really annoyed me. If this review seems a little disjointed as you read it, that's because it is. I had a tough time organizing my thoughts into any rhyme or reason. So let's get started. I usually start with things I liked, this time let's get the ugly out of the way first.

For the most part, I liked the writing. I thought it was poet...more
Tough review incoming! I don't even know where to start. There were a lot of things I liked about The Garden of Evening Mists, but there were also some things that really annoyed me. If this review seems a little disjointed as you read it, that's because it is. I had a tough time organizing my thoughts into any rhyme or reason. So let's get started. I usually start with things I liked, this time let's get the ugly out of the way first.

For the most part, I liked the writing. I thought it was poetic, dreamy, and subtle. It captured the somber tone of the book well. But, but...and this may just be me, but I cannot stand when authors overuse participle phrases. And this author used them more than necessary and in places where they didn't belong. It yanks you right out of the narrative and ruins the magic. For you non-editor folks who are wondering what a participial phrase is, here is an example:

Waiting near the bus stop, John noticed that his wallet was missing.

And I'm sorry, but if you pop that into the narrative anywhere, it will jolt you right out of it. It's a huge sign of amateurish writing when they are overused. In my experiences, there are places where participial phrases are needed and totally work. But they should be used conservatively. And the sign of a talented writer is knowing when and when not to use them. A good editor should have caught these issues and fixed them.

Next, the ending. I can't talk too much about it without spoiling anything, but just know that I felt there were a lot of loose ends that weren't tied up. I don't mind when a book ends bittersweetly, but it kind of just...stopped. And left you wondering. In a bad way. Not something I care for, and if I had known it would have ended that way, I might have passed on it. Just not what I was in the mood for currently. But in the end I'm glad I read it because there were a lot of things I did like.

This is definitely a character-driven novel. It's definitely more about characters than plot. And whenever I say that, it always tends to scare people away, but it really shouldn't. If you go into this book knowing that you will be getting to know the characters and their lives a great deal, and that the pacing is much slower than usual, then I am sure you will enjoy it. Yun Ling was a tough character to like at times. Because she had been through so much in the Japanese internment camp, you really wanted to feel for her and understand her situation. But it was hard, because a lot of times I felt she was being unfair to the people around her. Especially Aritomo, the Japanese gardener. Yes, he was Japanese, but just because there were Japanese that treated you terribly in the camp doesn't mean you should paint an entire nationality with the same brush. And she did. Like I said, I feel for her. I cannot begin to understand what being in that camp and losing her sister was like, but all I can do is apply what I know about life. And you just don't treat people that way. It really messed with her mind a lot. This is a book that I believe will leave you feeling conflicted emotionally. I grew quite attached to Aritomo and I felt strange about that as well because he was the Emperor Hirohito's gardener. I don't even know what to say. It was a tough read. But I loved that about it. But definitely character-driven. It was about feelings, emotions, and relationships.

Apart from my issues with the participle phrases, most of the writing was gorgeous. The imagery the author managed to create was out of this world. The Cameron Highlands in Malaysia sounds like an amazing place. All those terraced tea plantations? Gorgeous. Here's a paragraph from the book that I feel captures the writing and the tone of the book well.

In my mind I saw the stream winding down these mountains, leaving Yugiri, to be pulled into a river. I saw the prayers steam off the water in the morning sun as the river flowed through the rainforest, past a tiger and a mouse-deer drinking from it, past Malay kampongs and aboriginal longhouses and Chinese squatter settlements. I saw a farmer in his paddy field by the river's edge uncrook his back and gaze upwards to the sky, feeling a cool breeze on his face and a long moment of unexplained contentment.

You will find a lot more writing like that in this book. Beautiful passages and deep character development. It's about the characters and their lives and the challenges they face. If it sounds like something you might like, I would highly recommend it to you. (less)

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Jan 03, 2013 Wanda rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Wanda by: Gaeta1

Shelves: asian, ebooks, 2013, fiction-and-literature

Because I enjoyed The Gift of Rain. The writing is beautiful, calming and peaceful just like a Japanese Zen Garden.

Elegant eloquence.

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Oct 02, 2012 Elaine rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012

Extraordinarily evocative of the Malaysian highlands setting -- the landscape, weather, smells, flora and fauna are so vividly depicted that you look up from the kindle surprised to be in autumnal New York.

If only the characters had as much life as the herons, tea plants, jungle, etc.. But no, none of the peripheral characters -- Magnus, Emily, the narrator's family, Fredrik, Ah Cheong -- are more than cardboard. As for the main characters, Aritomo -- the Japanese gardener, printmaker, tatoo ar...more Extraordinarily evocative of the Malaysian highlands setting -- the landscape, weather, smells, flora and fauna are so vividly depicted that you look up from the kindle surprised to be in autumnal New York.

If only the characters had as much life as the herons, tea plants, jungle, etc.. But no, none of the peripheral characters -- Magnus, Emily, the narrator's family, Fredrik, Ah Cheong -- are more than cardboard. As for the main characters, Aritomo -- the Japanese gardener, printmaker, tatoo artist, archer and possible spy -- is an inscrutable man of few words but deep teachings, i.e., a bundle of cliches (and flat behind those cliches). The narrator seems cold at her core.

I never thought I could read a WWII prison camp narrative, especially one involving comfort women and mass killings, and be unmoved and almost impatient...but Garden of the Evening Mists did that for me. True, the narrator has her reasons for keeping her distance from her story, but she is so restrained as to be frigid and stiff (when not petulantly angry). Even her love stories are merely notes on a page-- not felt.

And the pacing crawls. All the twists and turns are at the very end, and by then, you're a little sick of the fetishism of Japanese arts and endless descriptions of gardening. The very weird dynamic at the book's core is that the Japanese mastery of gardening and art (including the very creepy art of whole body tatooing and preserving those tatoos after death) is unquestioningly revered, even as the Japanese are committing war crimes and devestating large swathes of Asia. Similarly, the book, in having the native Malay laborers that realize the Japanese gardener's art (and work the white man's tea plantations)be totally characterless and invisible, ends up valorizing without really interrogating the existing hierarchies.

The only part of the book that really sings is the interlude that it is a love story between a young Japanese kamikaze pilot and a senior (male) Japanese official. That was heartfelt, romantic, poignant. Revealingly, that tells you something about a good book the author could have written -- if he didn't feel it would be more correct? or something? to tell us the story of a female Chinese former prisoner instead.

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Oct 16, 2012 Kay rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: literary-fiction, best-of-2012, art-in-wwii

I loved this book, which means it probably won't win the Booker Prize, for which it is shortlisted. Set in Malaya, the novel shifts between two periods of time: 1951, when a Communist guerilla movement rages and 30 years later, when the narrator, Yun Ling, returns to the scene of a Japanese garden that she helped create under the direction of Aritomo, who had been a head gardener for the Emperor of Japan.

The book is a thoughtful, beautifully written exploration of art, brutality (the narrator lo...more

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Oct 27, 2012 Vivienne rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012-man-booker, period-fiction, war

"On a mountain above the clouds once lived a man who had been the gardener of the Emperor of Japan."

This opening line immediately draws the reader into a novel that combines a powerful tale of the Japanese occupation of Malaya and its aftermath with Zen and Taoist philosophy and their applications.

I found myself swept up into the world described within this exquisite novel. The language was haunting and lyrical and its story compelling. I read this as part of the Man Booker Prize Shadow Group an...more

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Sep 25, 2012 Nancy Oakes added it

Shelves: fiction, booker-prize-nominee

4.5 stars -- super book. I have a paperback copy of this book that needs a home if anyone wants it (US only, I'll pay postage).

A few years back, Tan Twan Eng's novel The Gift of Rain was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and I remember thinking how very not cool it was that it didn't go on to make the shortlist. That was the year that Anne Enright won for her The Gathering, which I didn't really care for; it was also the year I was introduced to the work of Mohsin Hamid (The Reluctant Fundame...more 4.5 stars -- super book. I have a paperback copy of this book that needs a home if anyone wants it (US only, I'll pay postage).

A few years back, Tan Twan Eng's novel The Gift of Rain was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and I remember thinking how very not cool it was that it didn't go on to make the shortlist. That was the year that Anne Enright won for her The Gathering, which I didn't really care for; it was also the year I was introduced to the work of Mohsin Hamid (The Reluctant Fundamentalist) and Lloyd Jones (Mister Pip), two authors whose novels I've really come to like. When I read The Gift of Rain that year, I definitely hoped it wouldn't be the last I saw of its author, so this year I was happily surprised to see his newest on both the Booker longlist and then the shortlist. Frankly, I would have bought it anyway even if it had not made it as a judges' selection.

As the story begins, Yun Ling Teoh has just retired as a judge on Kuala Lumpur's Supreme Court after serving for fourteen years. The sole survivor of imprisonment in a Japanese camp at the age of nineteen, after the war was over she worked for a time with the War Crimes Tribunal, and she received her law degree before returning to Malaya to work as a Deputy Public Prosecutor. Now she is making her way back to the mountain highlands after a long time away to the home bequeathed to her by a once former gardener to the Japanese emperor, Nakamura Aritomo. The home and its surrounding gardens are called Yugiri -- "Evening Mists." She is there to meet with an historian who is interested in Aritomo's woodblock prints and other works of art, but she also has plans to fully restore the Garden of Evening Mists. Yun Ling is suffering from oncoming aphasia, which will eventually wipe out her memories. As she notes,

"I have become a collapsing star, pulling everything around it, even the light, into an ever-expanding void. Once I lose all ability to communicate with the world outside myself, nothing will be left but what I remember. My memories will be like a sandbar, cut off from the shore by the incoming tide. In time they will become submerged, inaccessible to me. The prospect terrifies me. For what is a person without memories? A ghost, trapped between worlds, without an identity, with no future, no past.”

When she relays her fears to a long-time friend, he convinces her that she should write down everything, and so she begins to record all of her memories. Her story begins in her twenties, when she makes her way to Aritomo, who lives next to the tea plantation owned by friends of Yun Ling's family. She has come to ask Aritomo to fulfill her now-dead sister's dream and create a garden dedicated to her memory, but Aritomo refuses. Instead, he makes Yun Ling an unprecedented offer: he will take her on as apprentice until the return of the monsoon. Despite her ongoing, intense hatred for the Japanese, the beauty of Aritomo's work at Yugiri leads her to accepts his offer. While she works with Aritomo, they slowly begin to discover that despite their differences, they have a great deal in common other than gardens. Her account of the past winds its way through the Japanese occupation of Malaya which led to Yun Ling's imprisonment in a Japanese prison camp, the sister she left behind, the ongoing hope of nationalists for the country's independence from the British, and the communists who are attacking plantation owners during the Malayan Emergency. It all adds up to an unforgettable story of two very different people who have carried their ghosts around with them for years -- and what they discover about themselves and each other in the Garden of Evening Mists. It is also a story about memory and forgetting, loss, guilt and survival.

There is so much to love about this book, especially in Tan Twan Eng's descriptions. As Yun Ling explores the garden, she discovers Aritomo's focus on the ancient art of "Shakkei," or "borrowed scenery," and the reader is right there along with her. Through the author's descriptions, the reader, like Yun Ling and other visitors to Yugiri, is invited to stop at different points of the garden to appreciate the perfect framing of the sea or the turning of a waterwheel, or even to ponder the distance between stones.

But it's not just in Aritomo's garden where the richness of place comes alive -- the jungles, the tea plantations, the beautiful homes with their wide verandahs, the villages, even the prison camp hidden somewhere in the mountains -- the author makes them all real so that at times it's easy to imagine hearing the sound of birds or to feel the lush grass beneath your feet.

The characters are also carefully constructed. The pasts surrounding Yun Ling and Aritomo are uncovered little by little, creating an aura of mystery around their characters. But there is also something to love about what is not in this story: there is never any sort of apology from Aritomo to Yun Ling regarding the abuses she and her sister suffered at the hands of the Japanese; and it is clear from the outset that there has never been any kind of forgiveness from Yun Ling. There is also no perfection in the characters; instead they are shown to be human with their flaws and vulnerabilities, even as the reader follows them throughout their individual transformations.

There are many reviews of this novel that point to a number of formulaic similarities between this book and The Gift of Rain -- and there might be a little something to this idea, and there are places where the book gets fluffy in terms of writing style, but in the end it just doesn't matter. I'll leave the critiques of mechanics, style, and other elements to the experts, but from a casual reader's perspective, Garden of Evening Mists is an elegant book with an incredible woman at its center. It is certainly the most emotionally powerful of the books (read so far) on this year's Booker Prize shortlist, but whether it wins or not, it is definitely one not to miss. (less)

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Sep 09, 2012 Lisa rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012-man-asian, malaysia, library-book-or-loan, 21st-century

The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng has a slow start so at first it seems a bit puzzling that it was longlisted for the Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize. But as one reads on, other puzzles reveal themselves and then the nominations are not a puzzle at all.

The narrator is Yun Ling, torn between remembering and forgetting. She has spent most of her life trying to forget the cruelties of the Japanese Occupation of Malaya but is now desperate to bear witness to i...more

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Nov 17, 2012 Felicia rated it 3 of 5 stars

I don't know if the book is a real 5 star book for me, or if I feel the pressure to rate it as such. The writing is beautiful. I felt that I was there experiencing it all; the garden, the smells, the forest, the cave, the estates etc. It's interesting that Eng's main character, the narrator of the story, is a woman. Sometimes it seemed as if the book was competing with his first work and there were elements that were quite similar. Overall, in a few days I might think that it is really a five st...more

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May 15, 2013 Sophie rated it 5 of 5 stars

There are books you enjoy and books you admire, and is in both categories. So often used to reading and researching a Western perspective on the second world war, this is a haunting and beautiful vision of the other side of the glass, a story that is slowly and delicately unpicked backwatds through the communist uprising in Malaya to the experiences of the main character in a Japanese Prisoner of War camp. It centers around the figure of Arimoto (and you will have to forgive my spelling as I lis...more There are books you enjoy and books you admire, and is in both categories. So often used to reading and researching a Western perspective on the second world war, this is a haunting and beautiful vision of the other side of the glass, a story that is slowly and delicately unpicked backwatds through the communist uprising in Malaya to the experiences of the main character in a Japanese Prisoner of War camp. It centers around the figure of Arimoto (and you will have to forgive my spelling as I listen to audio books rather than read them) Emperor Hirohito's gardener who is living in Malaya in apparent disgrace and, during the war, built a garden in the Cameron Highlands among the tea plantations. Yu Ling, the main character, seeks him out after her older sister's remembrance of the Japanese gardens they once visited was the only thing that kept them sane through the horror of the Japanese work camp in which they were imprisoned. Yu Ling alone survives, and after her initial career as a prosecutor falters, she seeks out Arimoto to ask him to build garden for her sister. He refuses at first but agrees to train her in the art of garden design so she might build a garden herself, and in so doing allows her to face what has happened to her. As their relationship deepens so does the mystery around why he's in Malaya and his disappearance a year and a half after they meet, along with his real involvement in the occupation and just what he might knows about the secret labour camp in which her sister and so many others died.
Using the same principals in it's unfolding narrative as the art of 'borrowed scenery' in Japanese garden design, the book seems to reveal somethings while keeping others hidden, only for you to realize that its secrets were in plain sight along. The main character herself has more to discover about her past than she know when she returns to the gardens at Yguri. With her memory failing at the onset of a form of Alzheimer's, she determines to record what took place years before, only to have her own assumptions challenged by tantalizing clues hidden in the Arimoto's art work, gardens and more.
The writing style is lyrical yet sparse, the most terrible detail of Yu Ling's war time experiences told with a chilling economy that makes them all the more appalling. Neither are the characters presented as good or bad; despite Yu Ling's hatred of the Japanese she and the reader come to see that they too were trapped and betrayed by the regime that entered the war and all suffer guilt and anger both at what they did and what was done to them. I can't recommend this book more highly to you as a stunning and gripping read.(less)

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May 06, 2013 Kate rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: five-stars, historical-fiction

"The stillness of the mountains awakens me. The depth of the silence: that is what I had forgotten about living in Yugiri ......."

It is the 1980's, and newly retired judge Teoh Yun Ling returns to the highlands of Malaya, where nearly forty years before, she first met Nakamura Aritomo, former gardener to the emperor of Japan. Ten years on from that first meeting, and still bearing both the physical and mental scars of her time in a Japanese prisoner camp during the occupation there, she hopes to...more

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Apr 29, 2013 Jim rated it 4 of 5 stars

Books are artificial constructs made up mostly of lies and half-truths and yet if we approach them with the right attitude they can also open us up “to something higher, something timeless.” I don’t want to make more of this book than it deserves—it’s an aspirational work certainly—but I found it a far more engrossing read than I expected it to be. The story is fine, told well enough even if it does meander a bit—and story is clearly important to the author—but I was more taken with the book’s “...more

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Mar 12, 2013 Parisflower rated it 4 of 5 stars

The setting for the this story is lush and beautiful Malaysia, Tan Twan Eng's writing is lyrical and evocative. The story revolves around Yun Ling Teoh who is a Chinese judge (a survivor of a Japanese war camp) and Aritomo a famous Japanese gardener (once gardener to the Emperor of Japan). Yun Ling wishes for Aritomo to create a garden in memory to Yun Ling's sister that she lost during her time in the Japanese war camp. He declines to design the garden but offers to let Yun Ling apprentice and...more

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Feb 15, 2013 Jennifer rated it 5 of 5 stars

I loved this book. It was a beautiful and engaging story, but it also created a feeling of stillness and serenity as you read. I was so intrigued with the theme of Japanese gardens that I started to imagine creating one in my back yard.

The story takes place in the Cameron Highlands in the hills of Malaysia. It revolves around a former judge and the owners of a tea plantation that together lived though a time of violence known as the emergency, when government troops were fighting a civil war ag...more

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Feb 08, 2013 Eric rated it 5 of 5 stars

A remarkable and beautifully written novel. Narrator Yun Ling would have to be considered the protagonist, but where does that leave the charismatic central character Nakamura Aritomo? This is the same dilemma proposed by McMurtry's "Lonesome Dove" with Gus and Call. Garden is equally sweeping in a much different way in a much different land, tho there is a central quest of sorts in Eng's novel as well: the perfect garden. Yet that is doubled too with the tattoo theme and tripled with Yun Ling's...more

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Feb 04, 2013 Steven Langdon rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: super

"The Garden of Evening Mists" seems at first to be a quietly reflective somewhat mournful novel, following a retiring woman judge as she comes to terms with the change in her life in a highlands Malaysian garden setting which has declined over the years from its period of carefully built beauty. Yet gradually the book becomes transformed into an increasingly gripping story of the relationship between the Chinese judge when she was young and the exiled Japanese gardener-to-the-Emperor. And this s...more "The Garden of Evening Mists" seems at first to be a quietly reflective somewhat mournful novel, following a retiring woman judge as she comes to terms with the change in her life in a highlands Malaysian garden setting which has declined over the years from its period of carefully built beauty. Yet gradually the book becomes transformed into an increasingly gripping story of the relationship between the Chinese judge when she was young and the exiled Japanese gardener-to-the-Emperor. And this story becomes entwined into the hard-edged war between communists and non-communists in post-war Malaya -- and textured by the ongoing effects of the brutal Japanese occupation during World War Two. The garden comes in its complex integration with the world around it to reflect and to reconcile these currents.

The relationship is beautifully traced between Yun Ling Teoh, the Chinese labour camp survivor who becomes a judge, and Nakamura Aritomo, the expert designer of Japanese gardens who fled pre-war Japan to find exile in the tea plantation owned by South African Magnus Pretorius in Malaya. So are the ties that develop over time amongst the varied figures who find a security zone for cross-racial lives in the marginalized highlands area. In the end, the result is a multi-layered and powerful novel that explores the roles of memory, of love and of family in human life.

The strength of this book is suggested by the fact that it has been nominated for the short list of the Man Asian Literary Prize, to be awarded in March 2013. The novel was also on the short list for the 2012 Man Booker Prize in the U.K.

This is also a novel that probes the terror of memory loss for those who are aging. Judge Teoh suffers from aphasia, leading (she has been told) to dementia -- and the book takes the form of her memoir to preserve a record for when her mind has deteriorated. This is the underlying tragedy that maintains the mournfulness of this novel, even as the events it recounts become more stirring. It is a part of the layered sense of combined tones that gives this book its sense of depth.

I have never been to Malaysia, though I know the highlands tea plantations of East Africa. Yet Tan Twan Eng seems to convey atmosphere and attitude well so that he portrays a vivid sense of the country. This is just one sign of the effectiveness of an excellent novel, written with nuanced skill.
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Feb 04, 2013 Daphnar rated it 2 of 5 stars

The story of an ethnic Chinese woman from Malaysia during three points in her life: as a prisoner in a labor camp during the Japanese occupation during WWI, as an apprentice to a Japanese master gardener post-war, and as a retired judge in the current day.

I enjoyed the setting, knowing little about Malaysia and the multi-culti society there - Chinese, Malay, aboriginal people, Japanese, plus a smattering of "anglos" such as British and South African. Likewise I liked the exploration of rich them...more

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Dec 25, 2012 Sandie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012-books, historical-fiction

Yun Ling Teoh is a very angry woman. The daughter of a wealthy ethnic Chinese family in Malaya, she and her sister were taken prisoners by the Japanese during WWII and held in an unnamed camp where she and her sister were brutalized by the Emporers' troops. Years later she exercised her own form of vengeance for the crimes committed against her and her sister. As a prosecutor and then a judge her bitter distaste for her former captors remained and she sentenced many Japanese War criminals to dea...more

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Dec 04, 2012 Dianne rated it 4 of 5 stars

I'm familiar with the history and region on which this novel is based, and I was pleasantly surprised at the engaging narrative, though my inner teenager is still bored after one too many secondary school history lessons. I am also, of course, glad to see writers from this region represented, especially one that juggles several cultures and timelines as he does here, while maintaining a clear voice.

I liked the gentle, convincing pace of the pieces of the story coming together. Capturing the viol...more

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Dec 02, 2012 Katherine Davis rated it 3 of 5 stars

Eng explores in the lyric language of Japanese gardens and woodblock prints what it mean to come to terms with memories of suffering and with fears of the future. Judge Teoh Yun Ling, retiring early from a lifetime of service in Malaysia, returns to the tea plantation and Japanese garden in which she apprenticed following internment in a WWII Japanese slave labor camp. Diagnosed with a little known syndrome of brain deterioration that will leave her without the ability to understand the written...more

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Nov 28, 2012 AliceinWonderland rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

- The premise/concept of this book was so promising, not to mention the setting – Cameron Highlands, which I fondly recall visiting during family trips in my youth.

- But aside from several well-crafted, lyrical phrases, I found this book missed the mark for me for several reasons (despite the fact that I really wanted to love it):

a) The main character, Yun Ling – I found I had little sympathy for her or even empathy, despite her having been a war camp prisoner. In fact, though her “rage” is unde...more - The premise/concept of this book was so promising, not to mention the setting – Cameron Highlands, which I fondly recall visiting during family trips in my youth.

- But aside from several well-crafted, lyrical phrases, I found this book missed the mark for me for several reasons (despite the fact that I really wanted to love it):

a) The main character, Yun Ling – I found I had little sympathy for her or even empathy, despite her having been a war camp prisoner. In fact, though her “rage” is understandable, it starts to get annoying, and even repetitive, as she mentions her anger numerous times during the first 100 pages. As reader, Eng should trust us to know what we GET it (she’s been through stuff and she’s mad. No need to say it 500 times.) Also, she doesn’t seem to take a journey or make any character revelations by the end of the book. What lessons has she learned?? Has she really learned to let go of the past? Aside from deciding NOT to pursue the potential “buried treasure” revelation at the end of the book to find her war camp location, I didn’t get the feeling she had grown as a character or learned anything substantial. She seemed riddled with guilt and anger still.

b) The plot – Honestly, nothing happens for the first 280 pages except for gardening, some CT’s killing people, archery, drinking tea, eating mooncakes, etc…The book only starts to become interesting when the confusing “tattoo” or horimono plotline (which seemed a waste of time for me until I got to the end) eventually reveals that Yun Ling’s tattoo and Arimoto’s Yugiri gardens *could have* been a secret map to the Japanese treasure acquired through the spoils of war – AKA – “Golden Lily” all along. Finally, hidden treasure! I actually perked up, only to be let down when nobody tries to decipher any of Aritomo’s long lost clues. What a let down!! The one potential exciting plot incident and Eng lets it go, almost as if, hey, I’m getting close to 300 pages now, better end this novel and forget about the 1 exciting thing that could make this book spectacular.

c) The characters – None of them particularly memorable or effective. Aritomo might have been interesting, but he’s usually silent only to give out a few random nuggets of wisdom here and there to Yun Ling. And their love story was very strange and seemed contrived. Almost like, hey, you’re here and I’m here up in Cameron Highlands, why not hook up? Nothing better to do…Not convincing as lovers at all.

d) POV – I didn’t like how it started from the present day (Yun Ling old and retired) and after many chapters at varying intervals about the past, it would suddenly go back to present day again, leaving the reader not only disoriented, but not really providing any useful information to move forward the plot, except near the very end.

e) Professor Tatsuji & Kamikaze pilots – Though his story was interesting, I found it strangely placed in the narrative, like, why is this story even relevant to the current plot or storyline? The answer: It’s NOT. It just feels like Eng wanted to put some interesting tidbits about Kamikaze, perhaps from his research, and he just sort of inserted it in there.

f) The best part – The only portion of the novel I found very compelling was the chapter where Yun Ling finally recounts her experience at the prison camp. (But again, since she had already revealed her bad experiences from the past at the beginning of the novel, there was really no “mystery” surrounding her experience.) But that chapter was interesting to read. It read like a novel should…It made me wanting to know more…What would happen? How did she escape? What happened to her sister?

Overall, the book was OK. I could not give it a high rating because it lacked many things I look for in an outstanding novel.
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Nov 19, 2012 Kay Howe Lee rated it 5 of 5 stars

It is hard to place Tan Twan Eng’s The Garden of Evening Mists in a traditionally delineated category of it’s own – it seems to straddle the boundaries of historical fiction; transcending the genres of romance, and tragedy and loss. It is a profoundly touching novel that I personally feel, in time, will rise to take its place in the ranks of classical canon. Truly a great novel; I would do it no justice if I said it was anything less than absolutely, categorically, stunning.

The novel is a framed...more It is hard to place Tan Twan Eng’s The Garden of Evening Mists in a traditionally delineated category of it’s own – it seems to straddle the boundaries of historical fiction; transcending the genres of romance, and tragedy and loss. It is a profoundly touching novel that I personally feel, in time, will rise to take its place in the ranks of classical canon. Truly a great novel; I would do it no justice if I said it was anything less than absolutely, categorically, stunning.

The novel is a framed story told from the point of view of a Teoh Yun Ling, a person characterised by the misfortunes of her past, who tries to recall the events of her life as she grapples with her failing mental faculties. The story vacillates between the present (1980s), the Malayan Emergency of the 1950s, and the events of the Second World War, particular to the narrator’s experiences of being a Japanese Prisoner-of-War (or ‘Guest of the Emperor’) in an unnamed labour camp.

Filled with bitterness, Yun Ling tries to reconcile her animosity towards the Japanese with her deceased sister’s wish to create a Japanese Garden – a dream that she wishes to realise, if only for her sister’s memory. Through this, she unintentionally embarks on a journey of apprenticeship with the Emperor’s former gardener; in the process transforming both their lives into a tale of romance, tragedy and loss.

Although the novel did not seem particularly appealing to me at the start ( I failed to grasp the salience of a garden – even if it was special – in the whole scheme of things), I did eventually warm up to the ideas that were put across in the book. I found it deeply interesting, the way Tan delved into the psyche of a former POW; exploring the themes of memory, and of forgetting, and of love and loss. Indeed, the common thread of tragic love, as mirrored in several other characters in the novel is a powerful testament to the message of the horrors of war, the vicissitudes of life, and of course, the beauty of love, in whatever form it takes.

Tan’s depiction of Yun Ling as a person of great internal conflict is consistent with what readers would believe of anyone who has gone through such great emotional trauma. Although the more petulant and disenchanted aspect of Yun Ling’s personality is repeated almost ad nauseam, it is generally helpful in emphasising her personal development through her struggles to come to terms with the reality of things, to cope, to forget and remember. Her presence in the novel is a stark reminder of the limits of the human condition; how hard it is sometimes for us to forgive, how susceptible we are to love, and our capacity for cruelty.

Being part Straits-Chinese myself, and having grandparents who lived through these historical events, I am slightly embarrassed at my very basic understanding of the life that many suffered through the War, and even during the Malayan Emergency. For those that have no knowledge of these events, Tan provides a remarkable insight into the occurrences of this era; of the fear, of the suffering. Despite this, though, Tan also manages to create a certain, captivating, old-world charm that makes you want to have been a part of it.

In all, I think, reading this book will prove an extremely fulfilling endeavour to anyone who wishes to undertake it. If not for the historical context, and (conspiracy-theorist) war myths, or the love of the intricacies of Japanese gardening, or the extremely personal recollection of a life of pain and suffering, then you must read it for what it stands out to me most as – a love story (in newspeak, we say still a better love story than twilight!). You will not regret reading it.(less)

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Nov 05, 2012 Scribblingadvocate rated it 4 of 5 stars

This story of a Chinese judge,Yun Long, who was imprisononed by the Japanese during the second world in an unknown camp. Her sister was also imprisoned and was forced to become a 'comfort woman' to the Japanese soldiers. When her sister died, Yun Ling promises to create a garden in her sister's memory. She meets the gardener Artimo, who was the Emperor's gardener, but who has for many years lived in the Cameron Highlands, where he has created a garden on the Japanese principle of borrowed landsc...more

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Oct 30, 2012 Ryandake rated it 4 of 5 stars

how does one come to some kind of peace with having been a prisoner for no crime, enslaved by an occupying army?

this book has so many virtues: great storytelling, great characterizations (i defy you to ever forget Aritomo or Magnus after reading this book), some truly lovely sentences. it also has a slice of history with which i was utterly unfamiliar (japan's occupation of malaysia), and gives new perspectives on historical bits with which i am familiar (kamikaze pilots, japanese gardening &...more how does one come to some kind of peace with having been a prisoner for no crime, enslaved by an occupying army?

this book has so many virtues: great storytelling, great characterizations (i defy you to ever forget Aritomo or Magnus after reading this book), some truly lovely sentences. it also has a slice of history with which i was utterly unfamiliar (japan's occupation of malaysia), and gives new perspectives on historical bits with which i am familiar (kamikaze pilots, japanese gardening & the art of tattooing, ukiyo-e, and archery). if you are curious about these things, you will find this book a very enlightening read.

it's also in some ways a hard read, because no occupation by japan was ever a pretty thing. but the author does a very good job of putting horrible acts within a human and recognizable context; there are no cardboard cutout villains here, and everyone is more complex than they first appear to be.

and did i mention the pretty sentences? there really is some lovely writing here. the book was shortlisted for the Man Booker this year, and i would not at all be surprised to the see the author win one next time around.

but... one thing bothered me.

if you're at all a japan fangirl, you know very well the high points: gardening, ukiyo-e, archery, tattooing. the Floating World. kamikaze. this book hits them all, except for samurai and ninjas and robots. if you've done some reading on japan's multitudinous bad behaviors during WWII, you know about comfort women (which is a horrible mislabeling--they were victims of institutionalized, serial rape, and to label them with the term they were given by their rapists seems unspeakably cruel), Nanjing, Shanghai, prison camps. in a sense, the book doesn't really offer much different from this usual fare, although to be fair it does a far, far better job of it than most fiction i've seen on the subject.

there is one part of the history that is new to me, but it would be a spoiler to mention it here, and i'm not actually sure it is history and not fiction. so i'm going to look it up.

on the whole, though, it is a beautiful and moving book. (less)

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Oct 16, 2012 Rosario (http://rosario.blogspot.com/) rated it 4 of 5 stars

The last couple of years I've read a few books off the Man Booker longlist and, except for the winners (which were both meh reads for me), I've loved them all. This year I've decided to read as many books from the long-list as I possibly can, and The Garden of Evening Mists was the only one my library had right there.

The narrator, Teoh Yun Ling, is a Chinese Malaysian woman who was sent to a POW camp by the Japanese during World War II. After the end of the war, she became a one of the country'...more The last couple of years I've read a few books off the Man Booker longlist and, except for the winners (which were both meh reads for me), I've loved them all. This year I've decided to read as many books from the long-list as I possibly can, and The Garden of Evening Mists was the only one my library had right there.

The narrator, Teoh Yun Ling, is a Chinese Malaysian woman who was sent to a POW camp by the Japanese during World War II. After the end of the war, she became a one of the country's top judges. When we meet her, it's the late 1980s and she's just announced her retirement. We soon find out Yun Ling has a condition which is starting to affect her memory more and more, and before her mind goes completely, she decides she wants to record her memories, both of that time and of events that took place in the late 1950s.

Yun Ling was the only survivor of that POW camp, and her sister was one of those who died there. Her sister's love of Japanese formal gardens was one of the things that sustained her in the camp, so, despite the resentment Yun Ling feels for anything related to that country, she is determined to fulfil her sister's wish for a memorial garden in that style.

In the late 50s, Yun Ling is a young judge who finds herself in trouble due to her strong opposition of some of the policies of the colonial British government. She decides to spend some time staying with friends in the Cameron Highlands, in central Malaysia, where she can approach their neighbour and former gardener to the Japanese Emperor, Nakamura Aritomo, to commission her sister's garden. Aritomo declines her business, instead proposing that Yun Ling become his apprentice and create the garden herself.

The relationship between Yun Ling and and Aritomo cautiously develops over the months, as she comes to terms with the events of the war and finds out more about Aritomo and why he's in Malaysia, and about what the mysterious POW camp she was in was really about. And all the while, the Malaysian Emergency is raging, with communist guerrillas rising against the state and the state brutally repressing them, and the fight is much closer in the central Highlands than it was in the city.

This was a book where I liked how the different individual elements were done: the author's treatment of the issue of forgiveness, Yun Ling's struggle to reconcile her resentment and her increasingly closer relationship with Aritomo, Aritomo's past, the Emergency, and overarching all that, the gardens. But all those elements didn't completely gel together in my mind. It might be a shortcoming on my part, rather than a flaw in the book, but I struggled to see the unifying theme. This wasn't a major issue in my enjoyment of the book, since I felt all the elements did work on their own, but having it all click together better would have made the difference between a book I thought was good and one I thought was fantastic.

Also, while for the most part the writing was evocative and lovely, I thought it sometimes crossed the line into overwritten and style won out over substance (even straying a few times into spiritual mumbo-jumbo). This meant that it was sometimes difficult to properly understand the characters, since the writing acted as a barrier.

MY GRADE: A B.(less)

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Oct 16, 2012 Tugcenin rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

The story takes place in three different time periods; the second World War, Malaysia in the aftermath of World War II, and the present.

The war times scenes are very briefly told. Yun Ling Teoh was the only survivor of a Japanese prisoner camp, in Malaya Forests, at the age of nineteen. Almost 40 years later, she is now a Supreme Court justice. The book begins in her last day at work, before retirement. She has been diagnosed with a disease that would cause her to forget everything eventually. S...more

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