The Garden of Evening Mists in Around the Year in 52 Books

Dec 22, 2023 Book Concierge rated it it was amazing

Shelves: art, concierge, strong-women, world-war-ii, audio, culture, literary-fiction, malaysia

Audible audio narrated by Anna Bentinck

This is Eng’s second novel, following his Booker-Prize nominated The Gift of Rain . Once again, he sets the work in Malaysia, specifically Penang, Yun Ling Teoh is the sole survivor of a brutal Japanese wartime camp, who now (1951) lives in the Cameron Highlands, where she hopes to find peace. She discovered Yugiri, the only Japanese garden in Malaya, and its owner and creator, Aritomo, the exiled former gardener of the emperor of Japan. Despite her hatr Audible audio narrated by Anna Bentinck

This is Eng’s second novel, following his Booker-Prize nominated The Gift of Rain . Once again, he sets the work in Malaysia, specifically Penang, Yun Ling Teoh is the sole survivor of a brutal Japanese wartime camp, who now (1951) lives in the Cameron Highlands, where she hopes to find peace. She discovered Yugiri, the only Japanese garden in Malaya, and its owner and creator, Aritomo, the exiled former gardener of the emperor of Japan. Despite her hatred of the Japanese, Yun Ling asks Aritomo to create a garden in memory of her sister, who died in the camp. He refuses, but he does agree to take her on as an apprentice, at least until the monsoon comes, so that she can design the garden herself. World War II is over, but there is still a communist guerrilla war raging in the mountains, and there is considerable danger for the residents of the area. Slowly their stories - how Aritomo came to Penang, and how Yun Ling escaped the camp – come to light.

What a marvelous book! Poetic writing. Complex characters. Atmospheric descriptions. Eng brought right into this world. I felt the peace and serenity of the garden, and the terror of guerilla attacks. I could smell the jungle, feel the humid heat, hear the rain. I was fascinated by the tattoo art.

The story is told in flashback, as Yun Ling is trying to recollect the time she spent as an apprentice to Aritomo. But her memories, and her ability to commit them to writing are hampered by her physical deterioration. She is slowly but inextricably descending into a kind of dementia. Yet she faces her future, as she did her past, with courage and grace. “Before me lies a voyage of a million miles, and memory is the moonlight I will borrow to illuminate my way.”

The audio is narrated by Anna Bentinck. She is a skilled actor, but the accents she used for some of the Asian characters were rather badly done. I almost wish she had abandoned the idea of using different voices and just read it without the accents. I very nearly took away a half-star for her performance, but ultimately felt that the book deserved the full 5-star rating.
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Mar 01, 2017 Kaye rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 1kindle, 0fiction, authorfrom-malaysia

4.5, oh, why not 5?
Wow, in one word.
First-person narrative is hard to maintain successfully, but Tan (or Eng?) has done it perfectly.
The first part of this book is beautifully descriptive, moving through three time periods in the life of the narrator, very compelling reading. The second part is full of action, bringing the three periods together, a real page-turner.
Loved it.

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Oct 18, 2015 Marie (UK) rated it liked it

Shelves: 2015-reading-challenge

This book has almost universal praise. It is beautifully written but the description takes over from the characters and the story. Yun Ling Teoh and her sister are prisoners of war in a jungle enclave from which only Yun Ling returns. her one wish is to create a garden for her sister. In trying to do this she meets Aritomo a former Gardener of the Emperor of Japan. The story is of love and power used erroneously I struggled to find the main theme of the story and felt there was no unifying threa ...more

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Jan 07, 2024 Holli rated it really liked it

Shelves: listened-to-it

3.5

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Oct 20, 2024 Jen K rated it really liked it

This story was beautiful but also difficult. Yun Ling Teoh retires as a judge in the newly independent Malaysia and returns to the hills where she worked on recovery through creating a Japanese garden under the tutelage of a former gardener to the Emperor of Japan. The circumstance seemed quite unlikely as Yun was a sole survivor of a Japanese concentration camp during WWII still traumatized by the horrors she experienced and saw and then persecuted after the war until she was asked to leave due ...more

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Dec 17, 2021 Hannah Peterson rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: aty-2021

I didn't dislike this book - a 3 star review for me means that I found the book to be pretty evenly balanced between things I liked and things I didn't like, but weighted enough to the positive side that I'm glad I read it. But I do have to say I'm disappointed, because I kind of expected to really like this book and I can't quite pinpoint what it was about it that let me down.

I do know I found The Garden of Evening Mists to be very slow paced, to the point where I had a hard time getting throu I didn't dislike this book - a 3 star review for me means that I found the book to be pretty evenly balanced between things I liked and things I didn't like, but weighted enough to the positive side that I'm glad I read it. But I do have to say I'm disappointed, because I kind of expected to really like this book and I can't quite pinpoint what it was about it that let me down.

I do know I found The Garden of Evening Mists to be very slow paced, to the point where I had a hard time getting through certain sections of it. I don't mind a slower paced book and there are many books I absolutely adore that took some effort to get into at the beginning, but this one felt more like it was dragging. I do know that I found the setting and descriptions to be beautiful and entrancing, but had a much harder time connecting to the characters. I wrote in my review of Migrations about my struggle with stories that are told from grief-stricken/traumatized/numb protagonists - sometimes it works for me and I certainly understand that it's a very realistic portrayal, but it's easy to find protagonists like that distant and hard to connect to. And Yun Ling is hard for me to connect to, no matter how much I sympathize with her. And finally, I do know that I found the structure of this novel confusing, with it very unclear when various events were taking place. Even though I often love stories told non-chronologically, here I'm not sure what it added.

That all being said, there are several things I really enjoyed about this novel. For one, the writing style was beautiful and there were several quotes I highlighted, something I only do when I'm really drawn to. I was really interested in learning about the history of Malaysia, China, and Japan during WWII and the art of Japanese gardening, both of which are woven into the story very well. I was really taken with the concept of shakkei, the art of borrowed scenery, a Japanese gardening technique where the environment outside of a garden is used to augment the experience of being in the garden. Tan Twan Eng uses this concept in both a literal and metaphorical sense in a way I thought was very thoughtful and clever. And finally, this book did result in me feeling compelled to read several articles and essays about Japanese gardening and horimono, Japanese full-body tattoos. I consider this (feeling the pull to learn more about a topic) the mark of a successful historical fiction novel. So although I was disappointed not to love it, it was certainly worth the read for me. ...more

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Sep 16, 2023 Barbara rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2023-around-the-year-in-52-books, 2023-the-52-book-club-reading-chall, 2023-popsugar-reading-challenge, 2023-the-open-library

This story told by the fictional sole survivor of a concentration camp during Japan's occupation of Malaya will stay with me a long time. After being diagnosed with aphasia that will dull her mind and steal her memories, retired Chinese-Malayan Judge Teoh Yun Ling, returns from Kuala Lumpur to Yugiri, in the mountains, to record her memories of the place she visited three decades earlier, just after the end of World War II, to persuade ex-Imperial Japanese gardener Nakamura Aritomo, who is also ...more

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