Review: The Old Capital by Yasunari Kawabata (Sunday Salon)

Welcome to the Sunday Salon! There are two very good books I read last week that I recommend.

 by Yasunari Kawabata made me think of spring and my trip to the city of Kyoto in March 2008, just before the cherry blossoms came out.  I spent two days walking through the old districts and visiting shrines, including the Heian-jingu shrine, described in the novel .

The Old Capital by Yasunari Kawabata, published 2006.

Comments: Kyoto in spring and during its many festivals throughout the year are the background for Kawabata's novel. It's an homage to the Old Capital of Japan, with its age-old temples, shrines, and gardens, and its history of artisans - silk weavers, pottery makers, designers of traditional silk kimono.

Here is a picture I took in Kyoto, the Old Capital.


This Torii, a Shinto gateway, is flanked by evergreen trees. It is one of the largest in Japan.

Plot: The main character in the book, a young woman named Chieko, finds out that she was a foundling,  adopted by her parents, a Kyoto kimono designer, Takichiro, and his wife Shige. Shige has always told Chieko she was found under the trees during cherry blossom time in the Gion district and kidnapped. The neighbors say she was found outside the lattice doors of her parents' warehouse, a foundling abandoned by her real parents. Chieko grew up privileged. Her discovery of who she might be leads to an interesting revelation in the novel.

I could picture some of the places described in Kyoto and I also liked the sense of beauty and love of the outdoors in The Old Capital. Chieko and her friends enjoy special trips to see the cedar trees, the mountains, the cherry blossoms in the spring that Japan is famous for. Inbetween festivals, Chieko also learns more about who she is and about her good fortune with Takichiro and Shige.

Yasunari Kawabata was born in 1899 in Osaka, Japan and became an orphan at age two. Also author of Snow Country, Beauty and Sadness, and Thousand Cranes, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968.

Last week I also finished a good Parisian mystery,  Murder in the Palais Royal (Aimee Leduc Investigations, No. 10). I've read all the books in the series and enjoyed every one!  A review later. Am now in the middle of a new library find,  A Dead Hand: A Crime in Calcutta by travel writer, Paul Theroux.

My review of At Home with Laurie Ann, an interior decorator's guide, was posted Tuesday. A very colorful book.

I looted the library of about six other books, most of them mysteries. The covers, the titles, or the authors or all three combined convinced me to borrow them, even though I am way behind in my schedule of "many things to do."

How was your week?

The Sunday Salon: Ho, Hum week

Welcome to the Sunday Salon!  You can join in and sign up by clicking on the salon logo.

In between full time work, I did only two book reviews the past week. I tried to sneak in as many pages of reading as I could during lunch and breaks. I'm on the computer all day but can't blog, of course. It's been a busy but Ho Hum week.

Posted a review of The Writing on My Forehead: A Novel by Nafisa Haji (March 2009) for TLC Book Tours, plus a guest post by the author on writing.

The Godfather of Kathmandu by John Burdett, detective fiction, also got a review, which I changed around a few times as I had a hard time expressing how I felt about the book. There was just so much to it.

I'm half way through The Old Capital by Yasunari Kawabata, a short novel about the beauty of the old Kyoto, the ancient capital, and about a young girl finding out that she is adopted. Straight forward and easy to read.

I reviewed a new mystery novel, Murder in the Palais Royal (Aimee Leduc Investigations, No. 10) by Cara Black, set in Paris. One of my favorite mystery series.

Then there is a love story, Love in Mid Air by Kim Wright, a debut novel which I've started but not yet finished!

On the 6-hour drive to and from Canada last weekend, we listened to 8 discs of the 17-disc audio of  The Swan Thieves: A Novel.  My hubby, who loves art and a good mystery, really liked it. 

It will rain tomorrow. Later, I'll take down the old robin's nest in the tall bush/tree outside my window. I think robins build new ones each year.

Ho, hum, time to turn in! What did you do last week?

Nobel Prize Winning Authors: Pamuk and Kawabata

Orhan Pamuk's The Museum of Innocence was a new find. This is Pamuk's first novel after winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006.

The translation from the Turkish by Maureen Freely is easy to read, flows smoothly, and I became engrossed in the first half of the book by a love story that became a story of obsession. I'm now bogged down, however, on page 340 of 532 pages.

Afer loving and leaving a distant poor relative, the beautiful Fusun,  and becoming engaged to a high society Turkish woman, the main character Kemal feels shame and guilt. But he also cannot control his need for Fusun and pursues her, scouring the streets of Istanbul to find her after she disappears.

I'm at this point hoping the novel will pick up after these few pages that has me tired of Kemal's obsession.  I want the novel to move along faster, but I think that Pamuk has a hidden agenda in this book - comments on Turkish society, the conflict between East and West, the old and the new.

In the meantime, I've picked up the book of another Nobel prize winner, The Old Capital by Yasunari Kawabata. Published in 1962, the novel was listed as one of three cited by the committee which awarded Kawabata the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968.

The novel is about Chieko, a young woman living in Kyoto, the old capital of Japan, who discovers at age 20 that she is adopted and was a foundling abandoned by her biological parents.

It's a slim book, only 162 pages long! I hope to finish both books though, and write longer reviews!