Name: The Buddha in the attic
ISBN: 9780307700001

Julie Otsuka

The Buddha in the attic

Lindsay

A girl must blend into a room: she must be present without appearing to exist.

Is there any tribe more savage than the Americans?

Compared to what we are living in modern day America right now, this book was riveting.

kait

norna

Jason Hegyessy

Laura Mauler

I LOVED this book. It shows us the lives of these anonymous women starting off from one similar point - mail order brides on a boat from Japan to America in the early 1900s - and how each experience could go lots of ways and they all are just one tiny thread in the tapestry of life. Here is an example:

"Some of us worked quickly to impress them. Some of us worked quickly just to show them that we could pick plums and top beets and sack onions and crate berries just as quickly if not more quickly than the men. Some of us worked quickly because we had spent our entire childhoods bent over barefoot in the rice paddies and already knew what to do. Some of us worked quickly because our husbands had warned us that if we did not they would send us home on the very next boat. I asked for a wife who was able and strong. Some of us came from the city, and worked slowly, because we had never before held a hoe. "Easiest job in America," we were told. Some of us had been sickly and weak all our lives but after one week in the lemon groves of Riverside we felt stronger than oxen. One of us collapsed before she had even finished weeding her first row."

A subtle book, with flashes of sadness and flashes of goodness, all building to a quiet intensity of emotion. By the end of the book I felt my heart racing because it felt like I had truly seen how life goes, the good and bad and the sheer blind chance of it all.

Jennifer S

This book used a narration style that I'm unfamiliar with. It worked fairly well, but at times it was tiresome to read. Oftentimes whole chunks were written in an almost list like style. Overall this story was interesting and definitely stayed mostly true to historical facts. It was an interesting look into the mindset and experience of Japanese women in the US prior to and at the beginning of WWII.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • National Book Award Finalist • Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award The acclaimed author of When the Emperor Was Divine tells the story of a group of young women brought from Japan to San Francisco as “picture brides” a century ago in this "understated masterpiece ... that unfolds with great emotional power" (San Francisco Chronicle). In eight unforgettable sections, The Buddha in the Attic traces the extraordinary lives of these women, from their arduous journeys by boat, to their arrival in San Francisco and their tremulous first nights as new wives; from their experiences raising children who would later reject their culture and language, to the deracinating arrival of war. Julie Otsuka has written a spellbinding novel about identity and loyalty, and what it means to be an American in uncertain times.

The Buddha in the Attic

Isabella

Jeremy Wang

a really interesting story by catalog. the plural first person device worked well in general, although i sometimes wonder if it limited the storytelling possibilities (if you’re concerned primarily with collective experience, can you really give a representative depiction of any individual experience? and is the collective experience of any value apart from its constituent pieces?) 

otsuka still legendary for her ability to hunt out the smallest moments that can make you cry the hardest

Ofelia

La versione inglese di questo libro sembra guardarti sbattendo le ciglia e chiamarti con voce suadente; "comprami, comprami! sono il libro che fa per te!". E come dargli torto? La copertina è splendida, vale la pena di essere preso solo per quella e il titolo (The Buddha in the Attic) ti fa pensare subito ad una storia interessante. Allora dico io, perché la copertina italiana è così brutta e perché il titolo italiano se lo sono inventato su due piedi?
Parlando della storia, l'inizio va un pò troppo a rilento per i miei gusti e a volte i tantissimi punti di vista di accavallano un pò tra loro ma il libro si salva sul finale. Più tre stelline e mezzo di quattro, ma comunque un bel libro.

"In autunno non c'è nessuna festa del raccolto buddista in Ma. Street. Nessuna Festa del Crisantemo. Nessuna processione di lanterne di carta ondeggianti al crepuscolo. Nessuna bambina in kimono di cotone a maniche lunghe canta e balla fino a notte inoltrata al rullo selvaggio dei tamburi. Perché i giapponesi sono scomparsi, tutto qui."

Omar AlHashmi

Wow this book was so much better than I expected it. I got this book during the last week I was in Dubai, my friend insisted that I have to read it. And so I did, and I was pleasantly surprised. I would recommend this book to anyone who reads this review, seriously this book is worth it. That first chapter was one of the best beginnings to a book I have ever read. It really sucked me in, the author painted a perfect picture of differing emotions and feelings between the picture wives embarking into their new lives in America. I feel like the quote in the back of the book really explains the book well which is "Otsuka masterfully creates a chorus of unforgettable voices...". That's what the book is, a chorus. Because it doesn't focus on one character or one person its a collective trial between the Japanese. You leave the book with memories of the characters that were left behind throughout the book, and makes you think that these events are stuff that are inspired by real life events and make you wonder how crazy the world was back then. All in all it was an excellent read and I can't wait to read more of Otsuka's works. 5/5

Jeff Brown 

“The Buddha in the Attic” is the story of mail-order brides who left in the bowels of a ship from Japan to America, expecting their husbands to be rich and the country plentiful. This, of course, was not the case. The time period is from after WWI to early in WWII, and the story also involves the generation that followed.

I could go into great detail, but I will keep it short. The story is told in the manner that it is the group of women that are telling the story, not an individual. This was an interesting approach in many places in the book, but was also tedious in places: “We are from Osaka. We are from Tokyo. We are afraid of our husband because he gets angry. We love our husband because he’s caring.”

The best chapters are the opening one regarding the trip, “Babies”, Traitors” and “A Disappearance”.

You are going to either hate the style or at least be intrigued by it. A very good book.

Rachel

Such a good book! The Buddha in the Attic is about Japanese picture brides coming to America in the years before WWII. It's told from all of their perspectives and experiences from the boat ride, seeing their husbands for the first time, having sex, having children, working and then what happens to them, their families, the lives they built after Pearl Harbor happened. I love how it was written no set characters and it shows the diversity of these women's experiences during this time.

Julie Otsuka's The Buddha in the Attic, the follow-up to When the Emperor Was Divine was shortlisted for the 2011 National Book Award for Fiction and the 2011 Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and winner of the Pen Faulkner Award for Fiction 2012. Between the first and second world wars a group of young, non-English-speaking Japanese women travelled by boat to America. They were picture brides, clutching photos of husbands-to-be whom they had yet to meet. Julie Otsuka tells their extraordinary, heartbreaking story in this spellbinding and poetic account of strangers lost and alone in a new and deeply foreign land. 'Sweeping, symphonic, empathic . . . subtle, infinitely skilful . . . an exhilarating, compulsive read. Otsuka's haunting, heartbreaking conclusion, in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, is faultless' Daily Mail 'A tender, nuanced, empathetic exploration of the sorrows and consolations of a whole generation of women . . . the distaff equivalent of a war memorial' Daily Telegraph 'A haunting and heartbreaking look at the immigrant experience . . . Otsuka's keenly observed prose manages to capture whole histories in a sweep of gorgeous incantatory sentences' Marie Claire 'An understated masterpiece... she conjures up the lost voices of a generation of Japanese American women without losing sight of the distinct experience of each' San Francisco Chronicle Julie Otsuka was born and raised in California. She is the author of the novel When the Emperor Was Divine, and a recipient of the Asian American Literary Award, the American Library Association Alex Award, and a Guggenheim fellowship. Her second novel, The Buddha in the Attic, was nominated for the 2011 National Book Award. She lives in New York City.

The Buddha in the attic

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