Title: The Garden of Evening Mists Author: Tan Twan Eng
Published: September 4, 2012
Genre(s): Historical Fiction
Page Count: 335
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads:Malaya, 1951. Yun Ling Teoh, the scarred lone survivor of a brutal Japanese wartime camp, seeks solace among the jungle-fringed tea plantations of Cameron Highlands. There she discovers Yugiri, the only Japanese garden in Malaya, and its owner and creator, the enigmatic Aritomo, exiled former gardener of the emperor of Japan. Despite her hatred of the Japanese, Yun Ling seeks to engage Aritomo to create a garden in memory of her sister, who died in the camp. Aritomo refuses but agrees to accept Yun Ling as his apprentice "until the monsoon comes." Then she can design a garden for herself.
As the months pass, Yung Ling finds herself intimately drawn to the gardener and his art, while all around them a communist guerrilla war rages. But the Garden of Evening Mists remains a place of mystery. Who is Aritomo and how did he come to leave Japan? And is the real story of how Yun Ling managed to survive the war perhaps the darkest secret of all?
With his epigraph, a quote by Richard Holmes, author Tan Twan Eng captures the mood and themes of The Garden of Evening Mists, a quietly profound novel about a Straits Chinese woman whose desire to simultaneously honor her sister’s memory and move on from a traumatic past takes plagues her adult life. This war between remembering and forgetting sets Yun Ling on the path to meeting Aritomo, a reclusive Japanese man who night be the only person in Malaysia who can help her. In a narrative that slips in and out of the past, Tan unfolds the story of this growing bond between Yun Ling and Aritomo, revealing histories that both prefer to keep hidden.
The Garden of Evening Mists is not a “quick read”—the author’s pacing is deliberate and elegiac. The reader sees Yun Ling both at the end of her life and in 1951, when she’s in her thirties and just making Aritomo’s acquaintance (though she’s known of him for decades). The pieces of this protagonist’s story, narrated in first person, are a puzzle that is difficult to solve at first, but easier over time. In this way, the first portion of the book felt slow, and it took me some time to invest in the narrative, though by the midpoint I was completely absorbed in this story and the deft way Tan handled its overarching themes. Even so, this was still a slow, contemplative read; it isn’t a pageturner and doesn’t try to be.
Though the “mystery” at the heart of this novel is Aritomo, in some ways Yun Ling Herself is just as much of an enigma. Her experiences in a Japanese concentration camp haver left her scarred, angry, and devastated. She has endured much, and her coping mechanism has been to shut down emotionally. As a protagonist, Yun Ling is often cold and hard, and this might make her difficult to connect with in some ways. Yet I do think the author did an admirable job in presenting this character, with her horrific backstory, in a way that was respectful but also readable. Yun Ling might not be the easiest narrator, but I found her voice to be subtly compelling, with an important story to share.
But if I enjoyed Tan’s characters, I loved his exquisite attention to detail in terms of place and setting. The Garden of Evening Mists takes place in the Cameron Highlands of Malaysia, on a tea plantation owned by a Boer friend of Yun Ling’s family. Adjoining the plantation is Yugiri (“Evening Mists”), where Aritomo has built a traditional Japanese house and garden. Every aspect of this environment was given a personality and voice of its own, aided by the author’s gorgeous descriptions and imagery. When people talk about “setting as a character” in fiction, this is what they’re talking about.
Beyond lovely prose, there is depth and weight to this novel and its exploration of culture and history. Tan contrasts the horror of Yun Ling’s experiences in the concentration camp with her growing appreciation for Japanese art: its gardens and elaborate tattoos and woodblock prints. Is it wrong to appreciate the culture of a country that oppressed you? Can one hold both hate and appreciation towards the same country? More, Yun Ling seeks to forget her past, but how is it possible to do so?
Throughout The Garden of Evening Mists, Tan Twan Eng asks these questions and more as he develops the complex relationship between Yun Ling and Aritomo. This novel about the strengths and failures of memory is beautifully crafted. With a rich and dynamic Malaysia as a backdrop, The Garden of Evening Mists is a book that displays skill and nuance in every aspect of its writing. I was very pleased with this.
