The Garden of Evening Mists (2012) By Tan Twan Eng

In my Blog post from May of 2013, I raved about a book titled The Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng.  It is an exquisite work, and was a critical success -- an unlikely outcome for a first novel.  Like everyone else, I wondered if he’d be able to repeat his good fortune.  With The Garden of Evening Mists he amazingly accomplishes this fete, crafting a novel reading so beautifully that it seems effortless.

I’m not going to go so far as to call this formula writing, but much of the plot construction looks strikingly familiar.  The book is set in the central Highlands of the Malaya peninsula several years after World War II.  It has two primary characters and the story is built around their intense yet unexpected relationship.

The narrative is provided by a woman named Yun Ling Teoh, who with her sister, spent most of the war imprisoned by the Japanese in a camp hidden deep in the mountains.  After the war she embarks on a legal career, attaining a judgeship, with a record that includes service on the country’s war crimes tribunal in the capital.  As she retires from the Court, she returns to her native highlands with the desire to build a memorial garden honoring her sister who did not survive the camp.  

Once home, her goal is to enlist the help of a man named Aritomo to build the garden.  He is a reclusive Japanese national who once served as the gardener to the Emperor of Japan, before his self-exile to the then British Colony of Malaya.  A mysterious figure throughout the novel, Aritomo is the master gardener/creator of Yugiri [evening mists], a private, estate-size, Japanese Garden.   The relationship that develops between Aritomo and Judge Teoh is fascinating and is played out in war-time memories and the present day, with an ongoing Communist insurgency based in the surrounding jungles playing as a backdrop throughout the novel.

Teoh’s remembrance of meeting Aritomo makes clear their innate relationship which is at the core of the novel:

 

"He did not apologize for what his countrymen had done to my sister and me.  Not on that  rain-scratched morning when we first met, not at any other time.  What words could have healed my pain, returned my sister to me?  None.  And he understood that.  Not many people did."

Because the storyline involves a Japanese Garden, the ability to describe the scenery in prose that is visual is critical.  It is rare that books are written that succeed at this.  The Garden of Evening Mists is one of them, and it is Tan Twan Eng’s second such book.