Review Hasuga's Garden

Berthold Gambrel wrote a review of this book and asked me to read it and give my two cents worth on it. If you want an excellent description of the plot and theme click on the link and read the one by Berthold. 

Sometime plot and theme don't reveal what is important in a story. It's how the story is told that's important not the what. Hasuga's Garden is all about the tone, tenor and manner of the telling. Here's the opening of the book:

In the shade of a dark forest where a river passes, around a compound of trodden earth there is a cluster of huts--simple, windowless hovels with reed-thatch roofs peaked and open so the smoke of fires can ascend--a village made from reeds and mud. As yet the sun has not climbed above the mountains at the valley's edge so it is half-light here, though still possible against the gloom to make out crude essentials of subsistence living scattered among the dwellings; rough wooden tools, a rail of drying fish, a pelt on a wooden frame, bowls for grinding grain. A small jetty of wood leads out into the deeper water of the river, moorings for a couple of dugout canoes that bob and rub one another gently in the current. Two more such vessels are drawn up upon the riverbank a yard or so downstream....

I hope you get the gist of what I mean and Berthold means by saying this writing is poetic. Closer to free verse than iambic pentameter, but it's not straight forward prose. It's descriptive without being pedantic. It gives a visual of the area being described by appealing to your emotions instead of intellect. Because of this it's not an easy or fast read. It's like your favorite drink or meal, best savored slowly not gulped or wolfed down.

This book reminded me of Bridges of Madison County by Robert James Waller. If you know the plot and theme of the Bridges it sounds rather generic in the romance novel category. When your read the book and the poetic way it's written you understand why so many people fell in love with it and read it over and over again. No movie could have captured the essence of the book no matter how closely Clint Eastwood tried.

Books and authors like this are rare and should be treasured. I am so grateful to Berthold for recommending this book to me and nudging me into reading it. Otherwise I might have added it to my list of two or three hundred books on my TBR list and might have missed it.