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haileybones's review
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
Set in the 1950s on an island off the coast of Washington state, Snow Falling On Cedar is a court procedural novel. Told mostly through flashbacks through World War II and the arrest, imprisonment, and theft endured by Japanese-Americans at that time, there are several heavy themes throughout. The author focuses most on racism and the ways people are impacted by trauma. While the set-up is strong, the book ultimately felt too long and its resolutions rushed, unearned, and inauthentic.
David Guterson captures the setting and the people of San Piedro (a fictional island) in a romantic way that enveloped me in nostalgia because I spent a lot of time in Island County growing up. Those memories lent suspense to my experience of the earliest chapters, which I enjoyed. But even I became bored of the long, frequent descriptions of setting. This tendency to over-explain extended to the characters as well. I was walked through their lives in painstaking detail: family history, appearance, childhood, romance, combat experiences, and, unnecessarily in most cases, their sexual histories and preferences.
The issue of racism bears the marks of incomplete understanding. There are "good" moments, resonant characterizations of individual hate and prejudice manifesting into systemic injustices, but the Japanese and Japanese-American characters do not always feel as fully realized as their white counterparts. At times, they fall into into stoic, wooden stereotypes that feel emotionally dissonant to their personality. Some white characters are condemned by the text for their racism while others are allowed to justify their selfish, duplicitous hate without much consequence. In the end, I feltHatsue's instant forgiveness of Ishmael for his inappropriate incel pining and the concealment of crucial evidence of Kabuo's innocence was a step too far and tanked my final rating.
David Guterson captures the setting and the people of San Piedro (a fictional island) in a romantic way that enveloped me in nostalgia because I spent a lot of time in Island County growing up. Those memories lent suspense to my experience of the earliest chapters, which I enjoyed. But even I became bored of the long, frequent descriptions of setting. This tendency to over-explain extended to the characters as well. I was walked through their lives in painstaking detail: family history, appearance, childhood, romance, combat experiences, and, unnecessarily in most cases, their sexual histories and preferences.
The issue of racism bears the marks of incomplete understanding. There are "good" moments, resonant characterizations of individual hate and prejudice manifesting into systemic injustices, but the Japanese and Japanese-American characters do not always feel as fully realized as their white counterparts. At times, they fall into into stoic, wooden stereotypes that feel emotionally dissonant to their personality. Some white characters are condemned by the text for their racism while others are allowed to justify their selfish, duplicitous hate without much consequence. In the end, I felt
Content Warnings
Graphic: Medical trauma, Racism, Sexual content, Death, Gore, Misogyny, Gun violence, Injury/Injury detail, Racial slurs, Violence, War, and Xenophobia
Moderate: Hate crime, Murder, Sexual harassment, Toxic friendship, Toxic relationship, and Blood
Minor: Stalking and Infertility
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