The Buddha in the Attic
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Review
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 )
Paints a poignant, moving portrait of immigration by deftly weaving together a chorus of voices. Fascinating and tragic in equal measure (Easy Living )
A tender, nuanced, empathetic exploration of the sorrows and consolations of a whole generation of women (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 )
Novels written in the first person plural are rare. It's a narrative device that gives The Buddha in the Attic a deliciously melancholy quality . . . Powerful, lyrical and almost unbearably sad (Psychologies )
Powerfully moving . . . intensely lyrical . . . verges on the edge of poetry (Independent )
The tone is often incantatory, and though the language is direct, unconvoluted, almost without metaphor, its true and very unusual merit lies, I think, in that indefinable quality we call poetry (Ursula Le Guin Guardian )
A kind of collective memoir that squeezes volumes of experience into a small space . . . more than a history lesson because Otsuka compresses the individual emotions into one haunting story (The Times )
Her trick is to sum up a few life story in a few tantalising sentences, moving on to the next at lightning speed. The result is panoramic, each line opening a window on to the world of one woman after another, pinpointing each one's hopes and happiness or misery and pain (Sunday Express )
Intriguing . . . fleeting, singular images pile up and reverberate against each other to strange, memorable effect (Metro )
Spare but resonant, powerful, evocative (The New York Times Book Review )
Spare and stunning . . . Otsuka has created a tableau as intricate as the pen strokes her humble immigrant girls learned to use in letters to loved ones they'd never see again (Oprah Magazine )
A delicate, heartbreaking portrait . . . beautifully rendered . . . Otsuka's prose is precise and rich with imagery. [Readers] will finish this exceptional book profoundly moved. (Publishers Weekly )
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... The Buddha in the Attic seems destined to endure (San Francisco Chronicle )
This chorus of narrators speaks in a poetry that is both spare and passionate, sure to haunt even the most coldhearted among us (Chicago Tribune )
A stunning feat of empathetic imagination and emotional compression, capturing the experience of thousands of women (Vogue )
A lithe stunner (Elle )
To watch Emperor catching on with teachers and students in vast numbers is to grasp what must have happened at the outset for novels like Lord of the Flies and To Kill a Mockingbird (The New York Times on When the Emperor was Divine )
Already highly acclaimed in the US, it's a short novel, written with brutality and beauty. The Buddha in the Attic has the rare strength and poignancy that comes from telling an untold story (Word )
Paints a poignant, moving portrait of immigration by deftly weaving together a chorus of voices. Fascinating and tragic in equal measure (Easy Living )
A tender, nuanced, empathetic exploration of the sorrows and consolations of a whole generation of women (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 )
Novels written in the first person plural are rare. It's a narrative device that gives The Buddha in the Attic a deliciously melancholy quality . . . Powerful, lyrical and almost unbearably sad (Psychologies )
Powerfully moving . . . intensely lyrical . . . verges on the edge of poetry (Independent )
The tone is often incantatory, and though the language is direct, unconvoluted, almost without metaphor, its true and very unusual merit lies, I think, in that indefinable quality we call poetry (Ursula Le Guin Guardian )
A kind of collective memoir that squeezes volumes of experience into a small space . . . more than a history lesson because Otsuka compresses the individual emotions into one haunting story (The Times )
Her trick is to sum up a few life story in a few tantalising sentences, moving on to the next at lightning speed. The result is panoramic, each line opening a window on to the world of one woman after another, pinpointing each one's hopes and happiness or misery and pain (Sunday Express )
Intriguing . . . fleeting, singular images pile up and reverberate against each other to strange, memorable effect (Metro )
Spare but resonant, powerful, evocative (The New York Times Book Review )
Spare and stunning . . . Otsuka has created a tableau as intricate as the pen strokes her humble immigrant girls learned to use in letters to loved ones they'd never see again (Oprah Magazine )
A delicate, heartbreaking portrait . . . beautifully rendered . . . Otsuka's prose is precise and rich with imagery. [Readers] will finish this exceptional book profoundly moved. (Publishers Weekly )
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... The Buddha in the Attic seems destined to endure (San Francisco Chronicle )
This chorus of narrators speaks in a poetry that is both spare and passionate, sure to haunt even the most coldhearted among us (Chicago Tribune )
A stunning feat of empathetic imagination and emotional compression, capturing the experience of thousands of women (Vogue )
A lithe stunner (Elle )
To watch Emperor catching on with teachers and students in vast numbers is to grasp what must have happened at the outset for novels like Lord of the Flies and To Kill a Mockingbird (The New York Times on When the Emperor was Divine )
Already highly acclaimed in the US, it's a short novel, written with brutality and beauty. The Buddha in the Attic has the rare strength and poignancy that comes from telling an untold story (Word )
Product Description
Finalist for the 2011 National Book Award
In eight incantatory sections, The Buddha in the Attic traces the women's extraordinary lives, from their arduous journey by boat, where they exchange photographs of their husbands, imagining uncertain futures in an unknown land; to their arrival in San Francisco and their tremulous first nights as new wives; to their backbreaking work picking fruit in the fields and scrubbing the floors of white women in their homes; to their struggles to master a new language and a new culture; to their experiences in childbirth, and then as mothers, raising children who will ultimately reject their heritage and their history; to the deracinating arrival of war.
In language that has the force and the fury of poetry, Julie Otsuka has written a singularly spellbinding novel about the American dream.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
THE BUDDHA IN THE ATTIC,
By
This review is from: The Buddha in the Attic (Hardcover)
This wonderful novel tells the story of a group of young Japanese women, mail order brides shipped over to America in the 1900s to an unforeseen future, and a life and culture so alien to theirs. The journey takes us from the beginning as they commence their long and gruelling boat trip, full of trepidation and hope, and then continues as we learn of their lives as wives, mothers and as labourers.This is a short book but each and every of the 129 pages is so absorbing and in my opinion beautifully written. Highly recommend.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Rare, spare and fascinating,
This review is from: The Buddha in the Attic (Kindle Edition)
A beautiful novel, each word is exquisite.The unusual use of the collective voice is moving and allows the author to create many stories in what is a very short novel. You could read it one sitting. I found the glimpses of parting from mothers, babies, grown children very touching. Like the book, the characters seemed delicate, but were strong. The characters seem unquestioning, but through their voices the author makes her point very firmly.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Lyrical and haunting,
By
This review is from: The Buddha in the Attic (Hardcover)
"The Buddha in the Attic" is a strange novel. There is not one protagonist, or small named group of protagonists, with who the reader can connect. It is written entirely in the first-person plural "we". Occasionally, a named character will appear and stay for a paragraph at most and is never heard from again. We never find out how any individual story ends.We follow the mostly-nameless group of Japanese mail-order brides through arranged marriages to men who claimed to be bankers with large houses when they were labourers living in one-room shacks, through the chorus of descriptions of their separate wedding-nights, covering hard-work in America, child-birth and rearing children who were ashamed of their heritage and their parents' weathered hands, to the growing suspicion and persecution by their American neighbours as war approaches, which is written about in an eerily-frank matter. I'm not "giving away" the plot. I wouldn't say there's much of a plot to give. But, for me, this is not a weakness, because of the sheer quality of the writing. The writing is what makes this book. It is beautiful, lyrical. Reading "The Buddha in the Attic" is like reading long passages of poetry, with each chapter flowing musically into the next, so it's impossible to put down. And, through this expressive writing, we feel we learn all about the Japanese arranged brides. We learn about their hopes, their motives, their histories, their indiscretions, and their disappointments, even if we never learn their names. Julie Otsuka allows us to walk in their shoes, and to feel with them: their joys, their sorrows, their dreams of a new life, and their determination to make it work even when dissatisfied. Conclusion: A beautifully haunting book that will stay with me.
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