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A review by leighnonymous
The Ginger Tree by Oswald Wynd
4.0
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.
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.