Yun Ling comes across as emotionally detached sometimes but I think it works in her favor. There's not a lot of action happening but it still demands you pay attention, especially since Eng seems to love hinting at things rather than actually saying them. The book is slow, especially the first half. The relationship is alluded to but not explicitly spelled out (like many other things in the book), so you may miss it if you don't pay attention. I suppose this is hypocritical behavior but I found the whole thing believable - probably because I was anticipating it. Yun Ling (understandably) harbors a lot of bitterness against the Japanese and yet she's drawn to the reclusive Japanese gardener. I love how Eng treats it as a medium of healing, for both Yun Ling and (maybe) Aritomo. Ultimately though, it's the art that stands out. I found the cultural aspect mesmerizing.Ī stark contrast to this is Yun Ling's recollection of her POW days - extremely disturbing. There's gardening, ukiyo-e (woodblock printing) and horimonos (tattooing).

This book could very well be a tribute to the arts of Japan. The Beauty of Art / The Horrors of War. There's something almost tangible about the stillness of Yugiri despite the guerrilla violence that's rife in the surrounding jungles. (To remember when you want to forget and to forget when you want to remember. When Yun Ling visits Yugiri for the first time, the garden is an escape - a place for forgetting the brutalities of war.ģ6 years later, when Yun Ling returns with a disease that threatens to rob her off her memories, Yugiri transforms into a temple of contemplation, a place for remembering. I feel this theme is manifested in the entire book. There's a scene where Yun Ling comes across the yin-yang symbol in Aritomo's garden, which describes how the positive and the negative are interrelated to each other. The Garden of Evening Mists is a book about conflicts, or more specifically, it's about the co-existence of antithetical things. Instead, I'll tell you my version of what this book is about. There are too many layers and too many interpretations. Giving a summary for this book is daunting.

Eng has achieved a lot of super-ambitious things in 350 pages that many authors can only dream of doing, so I'm going to overlook the few flaws I encountered. I've read some unflattering reviews and found myself agreeing with the points they make, yet I cannot give this anything less than 5. This is not a book for everyone, be warned. It was turbulent and tranquil, beautiful and ugly - all at the same time - and when it was over, I found myself sitting by the window crying for reasons I cannot discern. Reading The Garden of Evening Mists felt like that. Have you ever sat in a dark room listening to an intricate piece of music (like Sergey Rachmaninoff's 'Tears') and experienced a deep-seated sadness when the last note died off? (This is going to be a long review because I have too many things to say.

Garden of the evening mists