The Buddha in the Attic
I read Julie Otsuka’s The Buddha in the Attic (available in Print or eBook) prior to it being named a finalist for this year’s National Book Award fiction prize which unintentionally puts me one step closer to my goal of reading all of the finalists prior to the announcement of the winner on November 16. (Side note: I’m beginning to doubt my success in this project).
The novel follows a group of Japanese mail order brides as they arrive in California prior to World War II. Their story is told through first-person plural as a collective, never identifying particular characters, and is divided by the major themes of their lives, such as working, child-rearing, and war.
The observations of the characters are expectantly heartbreaking, expressing a discontentment with their choice to leave their beautiful Japan and a longing for something greater than the lives they have ended up with.
The result is a work of yearning, poetic prose. At times, I found myself simply lost in the beauty of the words and cadence that Otsuka employs:
“Usually, our husbands had nothing to do with them. They never changed a single diaper. They never washed a dirty dish. They never touched a broom. In the evening, no matter how tired we were when we came in from the fields, they sat down and read the paper while we cooked dinner for the children and stayed up washing and mending piles of clothes until late. They never let us go to sleep before them. They never let us rise after the sun. You’ll set a bad example for the children. They never gave us even five minutes of rest.”
A beautifully crated novel told from a unique point-of-view, The Buddha in the Attic is a worthy opponent in the contenders for the National Book Award fiction prize.
This is a series of reviews of the 2011 National Book Award fiction finalists. As a personal goal, I'm attempting to read them all prior to the winner announcement.
Here are my reviews so far:
1. The Buddha in the Attic
2. The Sojourn
3. The Tiger's Wife
4. Binocular Vision
5. Salvage the Bones