Gail Tsukiyama

The Samurai's garden

Sachi looked up and smiled. “It is not an act of bravery to try to save your own village. It is an instinct to protect what you possess. Bravery is when you step in to help when you have nothing to lose.”

Kendall McClain

So good! The relationships between the characters are so wholesome and the story is very heartbreaking yet entirely adorable. The overarching moral of the story could be found in every slight detail in the book and I think it’s fascinating that the author was that meticulous and thoughtful. My only downside is that at times is was a bit too slow paced for me, but I love it dearly nonetheless!

altlovesbooks

Good points: The writing style is gorgeous. The author does a good job at juggling multiple characters and telling their stories through Stephen and his letters. I thought Sachi and her story was extremely compelling, even though the book's title points more towards Matsu as the main character. 

Bad(?) points: I hesitate to call them bad points because there's nothing exactly bad about this book, just points that didn't really resonate well with me. I felt like the story never really went anywhere, for one. We meet Stephen and the cast of characters, learn their backstories, and then...nothing else, really. I felt like this book really lacked something I needed to make it a more compelling read for me. 

To put it plainly, I thought this book was perfectly fine, but not really memorable. The writing was excellent, but I felt like the story never really went anywhere. A perfectly adequate, slow book, but not one that I am likely to remember for very long.

Dani C

3.5 stars. It was well written and a great story, but I wish some of those beautiful nuggets of poetry and deep thought could've been spread throughout the book. Instead there were only a couple from the beginning to the last quarter of the book and suddenly all this awesomeness came spewing out. It was almost like Tsukiyama was uncomfortable with the story and where it was going until she was almost done writing it, like she wasn't sure how she wanted to end it until it was happening.

josh

Alicia Hill

The daughter of a Chinese mother and a Japanese father, Gail Tsukiyama's The Samurai's Garden uses the Japanese invasion of China during the late 1930s as a somber backdrop for this extraordinary story. A 20-year-old Chinese painter named Stephen is sent to his family's summer home in a Japanese coastal village to recover from a bout with tuberculosis. Here he is cared for by Matsu, a reticent housekeeper and a master gardener. Over the course of a remarkable year, Stephen learns Matsu's secret and gains not only physical strength, but also profound spiritual insight. Matsu is a samurai of the soul, a man devoted to doing good and finding beauty in a cruel and arbitrary world, and Stephen is a noble student, learning to appreciate Matsu's generous and nurturing way of life and to love Matsu's soulmate, gentle Sachi, a woman afflicted with leprosy.

The Samurai's garden

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