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A review by sandyd
Polite Lies: On Being a Woman Caught Between Cultures by Kyoko Mori
4.0
This is an autobiography I stole from someone else's list, because I find Japanese culture fascinating. Mori describes some really eye opening cultural differences - health care (and whether you're told the 'whole' truth about your condition!), banking (just trust your relatives and don't ask questions), and the 'polite lies' of the title come to mind right off the bat.
I really liked her comparison of houses and marriages in Japan to small town (Green Bay) Wisconsin, too. She had some interesting insights on midwestern attitudes - kind of Prairie Home Companion-ish.
Sometimes the interesting cultural examinations didn't mesh well with her life story - which was sad in many ways, especially when it came to her relationship with her mother. I thought it dragged a bit in the second half, but not so much it didn't make me want to finish reading it. And there was a quite beautifully lyric final chapter that made up for the previous occasional slow passages.
I really liked her comparison of houses and marriages in Japan to small town (Green Bay) Wisconsin, too. She had some interesting insights on midwestern attitudes - kind of Prairie Home Companion-ish.
Sometimes the interesting cultural examinations didn't mesh well with her life story - which was sad in many ways, especially when it came to her relationship with her mother. I thought it dragged a bit in the second half, but not so much it didn't make me want to finish reading it. And there was a quite beautifully lyric final chapter that made up for the previous occasional slow passages.