The Samurai's Garden by Gail Tsukiyama

Availability

Libraries seem to have copies available, but there are some pretty cheap ones through Amazon if you'd rather go that route. Just a reminder that there are links to the right for the closest library systems and to a few online booksellers.

Any who have read it and want to get the conversation started post your questions and comments below!

From the Author's Website:  

The Samurai's Garden 
"On the eve of the Second World War, a young Chinese man is sent to his family's summer home in Japan to recover from tuberculosis. He will rest, swim in the salubrious sea, and paint in the brilliant shoreside light. It will be quiet and solitary. But he meets four local residents - a lovely young Japanese girl and three older people. What then ensues is a tale that readers will find at once classical yet utterly unique. Young Stephen has his own adventure, but it is the unfolding story of Matsu, Sachi, and Kenzo that seizes your attention and will stay with you forever. Tsukiyama, with lines as clean, simple, telling, and dazzling as the best of Oriental art, has created an exquisite little masterpiece."


Gail Tsukiyama
Gail Tsukiyama was born in San Francisco, California to a Chinese mother from Hong Kong and a Japanese father from Hawaii. She attended San Francisco State University where she received both her Bachelor of Arts Degree and a Master of Arts Degree in English with the emphasis in Creative Writing.  Most of her college work was focused on poetry, and she was the recipient of the Academy of American Poets Award.  A resident of the San Francisco Bay Area, she has been apart-time lecturer in Creative Writing at San Francisco State University, as well as a freelance book reviewer for the San Francisco Chronicle.  

Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner

For July we are discussing Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner

This is a novel based very much on the author's life, a story of the life-long friendship between two couples.

KUED did a documentary on Wallace Stegner, which unfortunately is not available online, but the site for it does have photos and and also transcripts of interviews they did for the documentary.

Here are a few discussion questions to get you thinking before we meet.  Feel free (especially if you can't come) to post your thoughts here.  

1. Given the difference between their upbringings (social class), what is the basis of friendship between these two couples? What does each couple gain from the friendship? Is it an equal or unequal relationship?

2. Have you ever had friends as generous as Sid and Charity Lang? How did Stegner write the pairs of characters so that we would believe Larry and Sally could accept the Langs repeated gifts without inducing shame and guilt?

3. Talk about the nature of the two marriages, how they differ. The Langs' marriage seems to be the one most under the microscope here, the most complicated of the two marriages.

4. Discuss the role of wives in the book. Have wives, especially faculty wives, changed since the 1930s?

5. Larry ruminates on the basis of their friendship with the Langs when they flatter him on his writing, asking on page 18: "Do we respond only to people who seem to find us interesting?" and "Can I think of anyone in my hole life whom I have liked without his first showing signs of liking me?" How do you respond to Larry's questions?

6. In the end, do you feel Charity should have thought more about others, or did she have the right to do things her way?