Audiobook. 5 stars. Narration by Davis Guterson, 4.5 stars.

Outstanding: tragic and beautiful. I'm so glad I found this book.

I have a book hangover now, so much to think about.

I read this as a teenager. It broke me. Maybe I should reread to see if I still think as highly of it.

If there was a choice for 3 1/2 stars, that is what I would choose. To me this book deserved more than just three stars, yet four may not reflect my true feelings for the story. It was not until I was nearing 100 pages did I start enjoying the book. From there I loved it. Yet in the last 100 pages it lost momentum for me again.

The stongest message of the book were the consequences of loss forced upon individuals because of prejudice and hysteria. It's unfair. So unfair. We're all just trying the live the happiest lives we can. No one should be denied the right.

If you're thinking these themes might be introduced overbearingly, they're not. There is a plot. The characters are well developed. This I liked.

PS--There is some rather descriptive sexual content, not gratutious but there nonetheless.

3.5 stars, though it says differently above. Worth reading, and owning, but perhaps I should have bought it on sale. Reviewing this book is taking me a good amount of time after finishing it. There are many things that I think ought to be said about the book, but I am unsure how they all fit together. In addition to this, I have to keep myself unaware of the award-status and the fact that my grandfather was a navyman and a sailor at heart.

The language is rough but rhythmic, representative of the typical life he seeks to represent. The vocabulary, though mostly good, does seem - especially in the first quarter - a little overdone, as if he is deliberately trying to use words instead of letting them flow out of his impetus. However, this does not drag the book.

What does drag the book, I feel, are three things in particular: two parts objective, one thing entirely subjective. First the subjective: I do not particularly enjoy courtroom novels (as might be seen from my star-reviews of Grisham). Next, the objective: I felt that at times it was languid, that parts were unnecessary, inefficient, unnecessary and eventually functioning as writer's slack in order to keep him thinking for future material. I found myself regularly checking to see how long I had to go for the chapter, and it was regularly 6-7 pages before finish. There were parts that seemed forced, as if he felt he had to come up with something brilliant when such was not required, and thus those times sounded inauthentic from him as an author. The third thing is, frankly, that there are nuances I believe are inconsistent with the background of whole groups of characters; for example, Buddhist tenets are misrepresented, even reversed once, to fit the mindset of the character in question. Perhaps this is on purpose, but if it was to be purported as fact, it was incorrect and took a little of the momentum away.

However, there is much about the book that keeps it sleek and enjoyable. One is the character development, that as far as I can tell is quite accurate for the personalities he chooses, and he maintains a sense of mystery about persons, so that one never fully knows any of them - this is accurate, realistic, and appreciable. Again the tone and flow is also well-representative of the setting which he seeks to portray. (Albeit, it is an entirely fictional setting; San Piedro Island cannot be visited, which affords him great leeway in character development as well. This last bit is perhaps a drawback to the full potential of his skill.) In addition to these things, his careful use of language, his ability to shift back and forth to be accurate about completely polar opposite opinions held by the characters, the flow of the storyline and graceful swtiching of the grammatical tenses (which was by far the strongest aspect of the writing - I found myself frequently engrossed in something and then all of sudden wondering how I got there, which means he lost me enough to stop paying attention to his writing ability altogether): all of these make this a book worth reading and keeping.

Being awarded the Faulkner is what drew me to it, but it may be the case as well that there was not as much fierce competition as of late. For all of these things, I gave it the rating above. A well-written novel, and worth enjoying. At the very least, being from a distinctly Northwestern voice, it made me crave blueberries and coffee!

Dense, plodding, dull, and lifeless. The plot is buried under a mass of irrelevant description and pointless detail.

Guterson painstakingly describes every object, every person, every place, every building, every change in the weather, and the entire life history of every character who appears in the novel, in great detail and at great length.

Take out all that pointless description, and you'd be left with maybe six pages of actual story, and even that story would be boring.

Read To Kill a Mockingbird instead.

David Guterson's award-winning debut is set in 1954 on the fictional island of San Pietro, off the coast of Washington state. When the body of fisherman Carl Heine is discovered early one foggy morning, the police are in no doubt that they have a murder on their hands. Suspicion falls upon Kabuo Miyamoto, a fellow fisherman who was known to been in dispute with the Heine family. Home to a large Japanese community, tensions have been high on San Pietro ever since Pearl Harbor, and the ensuing trial only serves to add fuel to the flames. With evidence piling up, thing are looking grim for Kabuo - his wife Hatsue and their children are starting to lose hope. But local newspaperman Ismael Chambers has a nagging feeling that the case is not as clear-cut as it seems, and he begins his own inquiries into Carl's death.

A review in the Independent on Sunday praised this novel for having a "page-whizzing narrative" and I can't think of a more inaccurate description. The pace is languorous for the most part, as Guterson gives us an intricate backstory of every major and minor character. Some of these detours I found absorbing, such as Ismael's horrific experiences in World War II. But other chapters, like a plodding reminiscence of his teenage romance with Hatsue almost put me to sleep. Yet I kept reading. The characters are so detailed and believably rendered, I had to find out their fates. So if you're looking for a nail-biting courtroom drama, I'd advise steering clear. However, if thoughtfully-constructed murder mysteries are your thing, then you can't go far wrong with this one.

n  "None of those other things makes a difference. Love is the strongest thing in the world, you know. Nothing can touch it. Nothing comes close. If we love each other we're safe from it all. Love is the biggest thing there is." n

I believe that this suspenseful novel would also appeal to fans of To Kill a Mockingbird.

Set in the North of Washington State, near the border with Canada in 1954, Snow Falling On Cedars focuses on the trial of a Japanese American suspected of the murder of a local fisherman. In doing so it explores the experience of Japanese Americans during and after the Second World War and the complex of prejudice and resentment they encountered. If that sounds like a preachy book, then I should add that Guterson is not given to generalisations. He is interested in individuals, the moral dilemmas they face and the struggles which accompany their decisions, whether for good or ill.

It's such a well-crafted book that it feels as though it were written in an earlier era when novels were built up slowly and solidly and there wasn't such a desperate need to grab the reader by the throat at the beginning of the book. Guterson's storytelling is slow and careful and his writing is characterised by an extraordinarily vivid evocation of place and character.

Here's how he describes the Counsel for the Defence

Nels Gudmundsson, the attorney who had been appointed to defend Kabuo Miyamoto, rose to cross-examine Art Moran with a slow and deliberate geriatric awkwardness, then roughly cleared the phlegm from his throat and hooked his thumbs behind his suspenders where they met their tiny black catch buttons. At seventy-nine, Nels was blind in his left eye and could distinguish only shades of light and darkness through its transient, shadowy pupil. The right, however, as if to make up for this deficiency, seemed preternaturally observant, even prescient, and as he plodded over the courtroom floorboards, advancing with a limp toward Art Moran, motes of light winked through it

And here's how he describes the beginning of the storm which provides the ever-present backdrop to the trial.

Outside the wind blew steadily from the north, driving snow against the courthouse. By noon three inches had settled on the town, a snow so ethereal it could hardly be said to have settled at all; instead it swirled like some icy fog, like the breath of ghosts, up and down Amity Harbor’s streets — powdery dust devils, frosted puffs of ivory cloud, spiraling tendrils of white smoke. By noon the smell of the sea was eviscerated, the sight of it mistily depleted, too; one’s field of vision narrowed in close, went blurry and snowbound, fuzzy and opaque, the sharp scent of frost burned in the nostrils of those who ventured out of doors. The snow flew up from their rubber boots as they struggled, heads down, toward Petersen’s Grocery. When they looked out into the whiteness of the world the wind flung it sharply at their narrowed eyes and foreshortened their view of everything.

Everything in this novel is clearly visualized and set out with a eye for salient detail. It's a compelling work of fiction that belongs, in my opinion, in the front rank of post-war American fiction.

I recently heard about this book when I caught part of a radio interview with the author. He was being interviewed about a new book of his, and this one was brought up. Without really describing what the book was about, they made it sound like a wonderful book.

I would like to give this book more than two stars, but there was just too much content that I felt like I needed to skim or skip. The author went into too much detail with some of his flashback scenes, some of which I found completely unnecessary. I really considered just not finishing it, but the outcome of the trial and whether or not the good in people would come out really had me wanting to see how it ended.

The story is focused on a murder trial on a small island off the Pacific Northwest about ten years after WWII. I liked how the author used flashbacks instead of dialogue for most of the witness testimony (except when those flashbacks were like those I mentioned above). The prejudices people held during this time was so disheartening. I loved the compassion that was shown by some of the characters. They realized that people are people, and all deserve respect and compassion.

This book is pretty far outside my normal reading, so please keep that in mind as you check out this review.
That said, Good god, this book is long. The book centers on a murder trial, but it also uses flashbacks to give background on the story and the various characters. It’s a lot like the first season of Lost, actually, with flashbacks comprising the bulk of the story. The problem, also like Lost, is that you’re really most interested in what’s happening now as opposed to what’s happened already.
A good example is near the ending. I won’t spoil anything here, but all you need to know is that it is on the eve of the verdict, the event the whole book is hinging on. You’ve read 400 pages leading up to this point, and the author makes one final digression to talk about another character in such exhaustive detail as to list the books on his bookshelf. Seriously. We’ve already heard quite a bit about this character, and I understand the utility of objects as clues to personality, but I do not need a list of every book the dude read. It’s kind of lazy in a weird way because it’s lazy while at the same time being a whole lot of work.
To continue the comparison to Lost, it also felt like a whole lot happened at the beginning and the end, but not so much in the middle.
Anyway, that’s just one example of what happens in the book pretty often. You have a good plot and interesting characters, but they get a little bogged down in the details. The author was trying to paint a very vivid picture using lots and lots of small details, but in cataloguing the details you really miss out on appreciating the painting as a whole. The story was very decompressed, but it was the least important details which were decompressed.
Finally, there is some good writing in here, but if you don’t know shit about sailing or the environment of the Pacific Northwest, you are SOL. The names of plants come up a lot more than their description, and if the smell of cedar isn’t the sort of detail you can call up, don’t expect a lot of help.

Overall, I was disappointed by this book. It could have been amazing, but Guterson doesn't seem to be able to create a compelling story or fully flesh out his characters. His greatest strength may be his ability to convey place - not in his occasionally overwrought, almost painfully flowery metaphors and similes, but in the rare moments where he captures the essence of the Pacific northwest in small but important details, simply stated. His language is evocative and moody, and there's no question that he knows what he wants to accomplish through his setting.

His characters, though, are another thing. The major players - Ishmael, Hatsue - are pretty fully formed and complex. Though the end of the book doesn't find them obviously transformed, this is for the best because it's truest to who they are. The rest of the characters are mostly embarrassingly stock stereotypes of 'town folk'.

The book moved slowly, which didn't bother me too much, but the resolution was underwhelming. It would have been problematic in many ways for Guterson to give us a ending like "the whole town learned an important lesson about diversity and tolerance" but at least that would have been an ending. The story ends timidly, afraid to explore anything too daring.

I really enjoyed the language and imagery the author created in this book. The title in itself sets the tone. I saw this years before the film and really felt the author conveyed what it was like living in the Pacific Northwest during the Second World War. I think the storyline is timeless. Forbidden love, societal rules...war. Recommended to those interested in period pieces with settings not often written about.