This remains my favorite book that I've ever read. It has suspense, romance, heartbreak, injustice, you name it. In addition, the setting is in the pacific northwest where I live and relates the terrible story of how japanese americans were treated in this country during World War II.
Guterson's descriptions brought the story into vivid focus. Many of the agricultural references rang true to me, as some of the same practices were in place when I was a boy.
Interestingly, I read another of his books and was unimpressed, so I am not sure I would choose any of his other works.

When I found the word "cedars" 7 times on a 2 page spread, I shut down. The language is simple; maybe I'm supposed to perceive it as deep, mysterious, or simply written in a beautiful way, but I just found it dull. I was so tired of hearing about snow and cedars.

I think it had a trial in it, and a Japanese fisherman, and some discrimination; maybe it happened in an internment camp in Washington state or something. Or maybe the main character is investigating his father's involvement in a trial in the 1940's. I don't remember. My book club read it and our discussion of it was not very interesting.

Funny- I just read a review by Gina- she called the language flowery and gave this example:

"By October San Piedro had slipped off its summer reverler's mask to reveal a torpid, soporific dreamer whose winter bed was made of wet green moss....The gutters filled with rust-colored pine needles and the pungent effluvium of alder leaves, and the drainpipes splashed with the winter rain."

I guess I just skim over this flowery language because it's so meaningless to the story. If I want imagery, I'll read some poetry, not this snowy cedary schlock. This language is flowery to the point of making no sense- a waste of the reader's time to ask them to parse out the convoluted imagery.

Another reviewer on this site said the book had endless narration- I agree- it needed less description of the scenery and more about the characters and time period.

What. A. Boring. Book.

Absolutely pointless, with half-dead characters, mystery that leads nowhere, and a big fat bunch of stereotypes about small communities, Japanese, Germans, war veterans, men, women, you name it. One of those books where a noble intent only infuriates the reader. Why was it even written? To show that East is East and West is West and they can have sex but not love or what?

The Japanese elements were beyond lame. OMG there is nothing like "odori dance", "Shizuoka-ken-prefecture" or whatever, and if the author thinks that mono-no aware means "the ultimate beauty", then fine, but he might want to know that it's about as appropriate a compliment to a woman on her wedding night as memento mori. Of course young Japanese people born in the States eat only rice balls and fish and drink only green tea. Ah and they write on rice paper. I'd write more but just don't want to waste any more time on this. 悪しからず。

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.

Imagine what WEST SIDE STORY would have been like if Maria had married Chino like a good little girl. And Tony just sat around Pop's Soda Shop feeling sorry for himself. For ten years.

David Guterson has written a careful, elegant novel that pushes all the right liberal buttons (racial prejudice, evil military men, small town nastiness) but resolutely avoids any kind of heat, sexual, political, racial, or otherwise. The "oppressed" Japanese are sentimentalized to the point of being laughably unreal. The white, small-town rubes are a flock of sheep. They're all empty-headed gossips as well as weak-minded bigots. Small towns are all alike. Big cities are full of enlightened, independent thinkers. Natch! (This story must have really wowed them on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Hey, that's where all the book reviewers are. Do you think maybe . . . maybe Guterson planned it that way? Nah . . .)

What makes this book so offensive -- is that it isn't offensive. There's nothing in it that anyone IMPORTANT could find frightening, or objectionable. It's written beautifully, with tasteful nature descriptions on every page. It's all very careful, very reverent, very dull.

The last half of this book is a real page turner. Loved it! I’ll add this to my favorites.

Really enjoyed this, was just perfect for me at the moment! I tend to like writing with lots of detail, more often than not, and this had that in a way that totally fit for me. Also great characterizations, interesting plot, a current story and lots of historical context filled in slowly in a way that really worked for me. It's also very visual, and I really liked that. I liked the map, I was visualizing scenes much more distinctly than I usually do while reading.
If this sort of content often works for you as well, I'd highly recommend it!
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Layers are one of the main thing I love about this book. There are layers of snow falling over everything on the small island of San Piedro, just east of Washington State, where this story is set. And this story is nominally about a murder trial, but that is only the most superficial layer. It is actually about what is involved in being human and having experiences and being shaped by those experiences.

How much can a person resist the effects of what happens to them, and how much is the impact of life on each person out of our control?

Race identity and race consciousness are the main vehicle for exploration of these questions.

Set in 1954, this story includes information about two main sets of people on this island - the white population and the Japanese population. Through extensive narrative on the past - mainly through the eyes of Ishmael Chambers, the one-armed newspaper man - we see the macro life of the island move forward over the decades. And we see in particular detail the period around the bombing of Pearl Harbor - which prompted an amount of hysteria against the Japanese community. The result of that hysteria was the internment of that population - that entire population, from this island - for a period. Which is something I hadn’t known too much about, was great to learn more. And then this novel’s main storyline - about a purchase of property by a Japanese family from a white family which was nearly concluded at the time of internment - is a personal layer woven into that historical reality.

The murder trial going on is that of Kabuo Miyamoto, who was the son of the man buying the property in question. He is accused of killing Carl Heine, the son of the man about the complete the sale when the internment took place. Carl was found dead on his fishing boat, and evidence (and racism) quickly directed attention to Kabuo. Kabuo is married to Hatsue, a woman of striking beauty. Hatsue and Ishmael had been close childhood friends, and were just at the threshold of becoming sexual when the internment took place. Ishmael remained completely enraptured with Hatsue yet to the current time, and plays a pivotal role in the trial as an outcome of that love.

Betrayal, jealousy, passion, racism, and other human intensities are woven into this community’s life on this small island that is built on fishing and tightly-wound relationships. I adore the details at the various levels - from the actual battlefield experiences of Ishmael in Japan to the internment camp to the fishing boats to the trial to the minute effects of the huge snowstorm that hits the island during the trial to the intimate human interaction details. And great enveloping read!

São 4,5 estrelas. Descreve muito bem a atmosfera suspensa de um julgamento numa ilha perto de Seattle no meio de uma tempestade de neve. Interessei-me pela história por causa do destino dos japoneses que viviam na América antes da segunda guerra. Mas temos também uma tragédia de pesca, a respectiva investigação policial, um amor adolescente proibido, a sempre traumática experiência de guerra de onde se sai com cicatrizes visíveis ou invisiveis, relações de vizinhos, de pais e filhos e um mundo tecnologicamente ultrapassado. Gostei.

4.4

Just wish Guterson had asked someone before naming one of his main characters "Kabuo," literally "turnip man."

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.

A well-written and at times compelling combination of murder mystery, love story, and social critique. However, although it’s interesting and wonderfully atmospheric, I think comparisons to Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird are unjustified; for a real masterpiece of racial relations and coming-of-age, read Mockingbird.