Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson and B.D. Wong

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Snow Falling on Cedars from Literature & Fiction

Snow Falling on Cedars
Available from Amazon
Price: $19.16
Updated on 6-30-2008.

Features

Audio CD

Publisher: Random House Audio; Abridged edition (October 26, 1999)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0375408118

ISBN-13: 978-0375408113

Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 4.9 x 1 inches

Shipping Weight: 6.6 ounces ()

Amazon.com
This is the kind of book where you can smell and hear and see the fictional world the writer has created, so palpably does the atmosphere come through. Set on an island in the straits north of Puget Sound, in Washington, where everyone is either a fisherman or a berry farmer, the story is nominally about a murder trial. But since it's set in the 1950s, lingering memories of World War II, internment camps and racism helps fuel suspicion of a Japanese-American fisherman, a lifelong resident of the islands. It's a great story, but the primary pleasure of the book is Guterson's renderings of the people and the place. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Amazon.com Audiobook Review
Ishmael Chambers, the one-man staff of the newspaper on San Piedro Island in Puget Sound, is covering the 1954 trial of a high school classmate accused of killing another classmate over a land dispute. Actor Peter Marinker--a stage veteran who has appeared in such movies as The Russia House and The Emerald Forest--takes us deep inside the world created by David Guterson in his award-winning 1994 novel. We learn the sensory details of life in a small fishing community; the emotional lives of people scarred inside and out by World War II; and the deep and unresolved prejudices toward the island's Japanese Americans, who were interned during the war--a tragedy that led to financial advantage for some islanders. Marinker deliberately but nimbly moves from the characters' distinctive voices to the poignant interior perspectives of the soulful, wounded Chambers as he tells a combination love story, murder mystery, and painful history lesson. (Running time: 15 hours, 10 cassettes) --Lou Schuler --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.

Reader Reviews
This review is from: Snow Falling on Cedars: A Novel (Paperback) Reviewer's Disclaimer: I grew up in the Puget Sound area and worked a couple of summers picking strawberries on farms owned by Japanese-American farmers. Snow Falling on Cedars was an absorbing, thoroughly enjoyable read. At times an interracial romance, a murder mystery, a courtroom drama, and a fictionalized chronicle of the World War II internment of Japanese-Americans, this book pulls the reader into an accurate rendering of life on an island in Puget Sound. The disparate aspects of the novel are seamlessly interwoven into a narrative that allows the reader to embrace the plot, the characters, and the dead-on descriptions of the physical characteristics of the novel's setting. The novel is narrated by Ismael Chambers, the publisher of the only newspaper on San Piedro Island, the fictional stand-in for Bainbridge Island, Washington. The islanders are, with few exceptions, either strawberry farmers or Salmon fishermen. When a white fisherman dies under suspicious circumstances, the evidence points towards a Japanese-American fisherman who was the last person to see the dead man alive. Ishmael's boyhood romance with Hatsue, the girl that later becomes the accused man's wife, provides fertile material for interesting flashbacks to the early 1940s, when virtually all of the island's Japanese-American population was carted off to internment camps soon after the bombing of Pearl Harbour. I have always believed that one of the true marks of a great novelist is his/her ability to create believable characters of the opposite sex. Many well-respected writers fail at this task. In this novel, David Guterson's portrayal of Hatsue rings as true as any reader could hope for. If you have seen the film based on the novel, please don't let its substantial shortcomings steer you away from this book, which is a must read for anyone who enjoys contemporary fiction. Comment | Permalink | (Report this)

Snow Falling on Cedars
List Price: $23.95
Available from Amazon
Price: $19.16
Updated on 6-30-2008.