The Gardens of Kyoto [Unbound]

The main character, Ellen, is a young girl during the early 1940's, fascinated by her cousin Randall, a slight, sensitive boy, a few years older, whom she sees only once or twice a year. Randall expands Ellen's view of the world, showing her secret rooms in his house and inviting her to share some of his intellectual curiosity about the Underground Railroad for escaping slaves which once stopped there. The voices of these young people, each alone in many ways, speak directly to the reader and involve him/her in both the action and the values of the times. Ellen shares Randall's fear as he leaves for the World War II, where, we have discovered in the opening sentence, he is killed on Iwo Jima. He leaves Ellen a box of "treasures," including his diary and his copy of The Gardens of Kyoto, a book given to him by his mother. As the diary and book reveal Randall's family history, we also learn about Ellen's family, the relationships of the parents, their relationships with each other, Ellen's relationships with each of them, and her relationship with the father of the child to whom she is leaving the written record which constitutes this novel.

The plot is full and rich with many overlaps of time and detail as the narrative shifts from pre-World War II to Korea. The main characters are fully developed, understandable people trying to adapt to their changing world the best way they can, some more successfully than others. However fascinating the story is (and it is totally captivating), Walbert's underlying themes and their development are even more fascinating (or were to me). She illustrates, among other things, that as in Kyoto's gardens, our views of "truth" are limited by our vantage points, that we sometimes confuse shadow with reality, and that there is a universal desire among all men to find peace and serenity. This is a remarkable novel, satisfying on every level, a total pleasure to read, with insights into so many aspects of life that you will be thinking about it long after you have finished reading. Mary Whipple

Descriptions of the gardens of Kyoto are interwoven into the narrative. They are gardens of great beauty, some with no benches, paths or ponds, flowers or trees, but with particular configurations of stone, rock and gravel, that invite spirits to dwell there and which draw the contemplation of the viewer looking for the balance of the hidden fifteenth stone, or reveal the long hewn verses of poetry cast by shadows on the ground at certain times in certain seasons.

The gardens of Kyoto, loved by Randall, and the professor who seeks to protect them, are under the same threat of destruction that overshadows the lives of the characters, yet they are spared, one glimmer of hope amid the sadness of lives never quite fulfilled, lives that just miss the connections, whether by circumstance or war or expectation.

Read a poem such as Owen's 'Anthem for Doomed Youth', and there is the same desolation and profound sadness for the waste that is war. In Randall's eyes as he leaves for war, is the final "holy glimmer of goodbyes"; In Ellen's inarticulate and lost farewell is the pall that is the "pallor of girls' brows". " 'Goodbye Ellen', he said, staring at me as if he might be counting my bones. I looked down, then up, again, though he was already gone, already running for the train; the ending so predictable: the boy leaves for war; the boy dies." (p.281). So simple, so heart rending.

And then, Henry, about to go to Korea, anticipating the dreadful experience, the bravery that demands the saving of the crucified pilot but will cost him his mind so that he will come home to be one of the men in the hospital, returned from war changed, unwell in an unspecified way.

They are all caught, like the rats of Nagasaki in the Japanese folk tale, who with nothing left to eat, board a ship to Satsuma, only to meet a similar ship of rats coming the other way and no food in Satsuma driving them to set sail for Nagasaki. There is no way out, no solution, and so they jump one by one from the ships. An "endless tale", like life, like the round of war, circumstance, society that governs the lives of the characters.

Ellen looks back on her life, altered and concealed in lengthening memories, and haunted by ghosts - of Randall, of the slaves who came to the decaying farmhouse in Maryland in times long gone, of Randall's mother, of sister Rita, of Henry - each layer of narrative a heartrending tale, conjured so skilfully by Kate Walbert in a gripping elliptical prose style that spins these powerful threads into a vivid and poetic emotional tapestry. Wonderful writing.

David Clark.