Snow
A Novel
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
Yuko Akita had two passions.
Haiku
and snow.
It is April 1884 and Yuko Akita has reached his seventeenth birthday on the Island of Hokkaid in the North of Japan. The time has come to choose his vocation, warrior or monk, but against the wishes of his father, Yuko settles on a third option: he will be a poet. Yuko begins to write the seventeen-syllable poems we know as haiku--all celebrating the beauty of snow, his one great subject.
One day, the Imperial Poet arrives from the Emperor's court. He has heard about the beauty of Yuko's poems and has come to meet the young poet himself. While agreeing the poems have a music all their own, the Imperial Poet notes that lacking color, Yuko's poems are destined to remain invisible to the world. If the young poet is to learn color, he must study with the great artist Soseki in the south of Japan.
Yuko sets off on a treacherous journey across the whole of Japan. Cold, hungry, and exhausted, he encounters a vision that will forever change his life. It is a woman, frozen in the ice. With pale gold hair, ice blue eyes and a face as white as snow, the dead beauty will obsess Yuko. Who was she? How did she come to meet her death in the depths of his beloved snow?
Arriving at Soseki's door, Yuko is shocked to discover that the great master of color is blind. He will gradullay come to learn that color is not something outside of us, but within us. He will also learn about his master's Samurai past...and Soseki's link to the woman in the snow. It is a beautiful love story which will have its echo in Yuko's own as he finds his own, living, daughter of snow....
With stunning visual images created out of minimalist prose, Snow is as delicate and inspiring as the haiku poetry it celebrates and emulates. A swift and refreshing read, the novel treats readers to a gorgeous love story while gently floating ideas such as what is the nature of art and perception? What is the place of passion in art and in life? Highly romantic and gracefully written, Snow is destined to become a cult classic.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Fermine meditates on poetry, love and art in this elegant love story-cum-parable set in Japan in the late 19th century. Delicate, sensitive Yuko Akita informs his father that he wishes to become a poet so that he can "learn to watch the passing of time." Despite his father's skepticism, Akita is soon writing beautiful haiku based on his obsession with snow. Seeking to help advance the boy's career, his father invites the imperial court poet to evaluate Yuko's work; after acknowledging the boy's talent, the poet tells Akita that he needs to study other art forms. Akita embarks on a journey to study with master artist Soseki; along the way he comes upon a strikingly beautiful European woman frozen into a massive chunk of ice. The elderly Soseki begins teaching Akita, and the narrative shifts to focus on the older artist, a former samurai who left the military after being wounded and married a beautiful French tightrope walker named Snow. The happy couple had a daughter, but after raising the girl Snow grew restless. She went back to tightrope walking, and died in an accident while performing. Fermine's pristine prose shimmers in English translation, and the deceptively simple story flows smoothly. The final twist involving Akita and Snow's daughter is predictable, but the ethereal prose and Fermine's graceful delivery of bits of wisdom make this brief fiction a memorable read.
