![]() ![]() ![]() Some of us came from the city, and wore stylish city clothes, but many more of us came from the country and on the boat we wore the same old kimonos we’d been wearing for years-faded hand-me-downs from our sisters that had been patched and redyed many times. Some of us had eaten nothing but rice gruel as young girls and had slightly bowed legs, and some of us were only fourteen years old and were still young girls ourselves. We had long black hair and flat wide feet and we were not very tall. The opening paragraph provides a good example of the narrative style: The entire novel - or should I say novella? it is only 129 pages after all - is told in the first person plural. (A bit like internet romances before the internet.) These were Japanese women who sailed to America to marry the Japanese men based there with whom they had established a correspondence and exchanged photographs. It traces the history of “ picture brides” of the early 1900s. And yet the story is strangely beguiling and deeply moving. ![]() ![]() It has no dialogue, no main character, no plot. Fiction – hardcover Fig Tree 129 pages 2012.Ĭhances are you have never read a book quite like Julie Otsuka’s The Buddha in the Attic. ![]()
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