There's always something extra delightful about coming across a novel you've never heard of by chance and then finding out you love it. I grabbed this one from my Little Free Library in the early days of the pandemic, when the public library was closed, but for some reason, just got around to reading it now.

The story of Mary, a rather innocent young woman, travelling by ship to China to marry a man she barely knows, pulled me in right from the first paragraph and held me in its thrall right to the end. While the story is billed as a romance (young woman falls madly in love with the wrong man and almost loses everything) it was so much more than that. Mary is no ordinary romantic heroine but instead a brave adventurer who learns to trust her instincts and use her intelligence to create a life for herself, even in the face of unbearable loss.

Spanning 40 years and several countries, this was a perfect read for those of us getting a little tired of staring at the same four walls for months on end. 4.5 stars.

Where has this book been hiding? I very much enjoyed this story of a young woman named Mary who makes her way through the world; although it was very, very sad. But that's time for ya. She starts off on a boat, traveling to China to meet her betrothed. I admit that at first I didn't much care for her - stuffy and scandalized to be seen on deck with a man and her chaperone nowhere in sight!

Her marriage to a patronizing jerk seemed miserable. Poor Mary was choking on society at every turn, as if her life was being forced into a corset. And she seemed so unaware of it. As a reader I wanted to scream to her to just leave. But then I remembered this was the early 1900's. And it was also a book.

She finds her way out of that life and into another, equally unpleasant one, in Japan, but at a cost. Her daughter is taken from her. Oddly, Mary didn't seem to mind this too much; she must not have bonded with her baby.

It isn't long before she loses her son, too, with whom she has bonded. And thus begins another life. This time, however, it's a life of her own choosing and as she moves through it her eyes are opened to how others live their lives and that we all have secrets and quirks and we're not better or worse than one another; we're just different. Mary recognizes this and her life picks up. She enjoys herself. She lives through a war, an earthquake, and the beginning of another war. All of her experiences are seen from the eyes of a "foreigner" in Japan. It is because of that that Mary has such a unique vision for her life and such drive despite all that has happened to her; it is also this that drives her fate.

What made this book even more appealing for me was that the author was a Japanese prisoner of war for three years. Instead of depicting the Japanese as evil, he treated them very kindly - as if he went through great pains to ensure that what he wrote was accurate, true, and fair. I got a really clear mental picture of Japan in the '20's and '30's, complete with the traditional nuances of behavior and conversation. This book will stick with me and I will miss Mary as a character.

Insights to Japan (and China) that after all these years can still hold true. The first third of the book was indescribably good. The next third was interesting and the last third seemed slightly odd but the final sucker punch to the gut clinched it for me. Some parts of the plot may leave you scratching your head but I encourage readers not to scrutinise too logically but just allow themselves to be swept along by Mary's life in East Asia. The slightly impassionate tone of her diary entries actually worked quite well, allowing the reader to have their own emotional reactions to her observations and tribulations.

will give this as gifts to younger generation so they can glimpse the experience of a world without rights for women. Vivid drama that takes place in China then Japan in the early 1900s.

Enjoyable insight into the history of 2 countries I know little about at an interesting time. Well written

Slow to get into because epistolary books are tough for me to swallow, but once the action started around the end of the first third I was immersed. I think it's a weird book to read in 2018 -- it feels antiquated in some of its attitudes about colonization, imperialism, and feminism, but also gives a little peek into a history I know very little about. A subdued, heartbreaking story about the shuttering of a heart in order to live one's life freely.

3.5

I had to read this book for a class, and for the most part, I quite enjoyed the story. Though, I really wish this hadn't been an epistolary novel. I'm just...not a huge fan of that type of storytelling, most of the time.