Snow Falling On Cedars

It took me the longest moment to get into “Snow Falling on Cedars”. I was telling my Mom about a book, which a good 90% of our conversations currently revolve around. I was telling her about “An American Marriage” by Tayari Jones, and how passionately angry the book made me, especially the fact that I know it isn’t just fiction, people get locked up every day on inane biases for crimes they didn’t commit simply because of their ethnicity. 

At which point Mama left the room and came back handing me “Snow Falling on Cedars”. “You should read this, it has a similar vibe”. So I diligently took it home and kept putting it down picking up other novels. My tolerance for heavy subject matter is much lower than normal with everything going on this year. I’ve had to put down books I’m in the middle of and loving because I emotionally can’t handle it and need to down a lighthearted comedy before I can resume. 

Finally this past week, a good 100 pages into the book I hit my groove. I was in it. I wanted to know if Kabuo had committed the murder, because honestly for most of the book you have no idea if he’s innocent or not. It’s obvious that the reason he was brought in was because he was Japanese. Furthermore he was a Japanese man descended from samurai (I’m sorry but can we just take a second, how freaking cool is that, like oh yeah my Grandpa was a legit samurai...anyway) who respected his culture and therefore learned and practiced a specific type of martial art (kendo). 

I loved how David went into the backgrounds of the different characters. Their motives, their personalities. I feel that authors really have to know their characters to be able to fully write a story. They have to create them so fully that they know what the character would do in any given situation. However that knowledge isn’t always shared with the readers. This novel I felt gave a much clearer picture of the motives and prejudices behind the characters. 

Let me just say Ishmael is a shitty shitty person. Yeah he did the right thing in the end, but he literally almost let an innocent man die. A man he knew without a doubt was innocent because he was jealous of that man's wife. I mean seriously people. The sad part is that it was totally believable. Yes I was baffled but I could definitely see something like that happening. Why people think it’s okay to feel entitled to other people and unable to respect their decisions is beyond me. She didn’t want you dude she chose someone else. Stop being so bitter it’s been more than a decade...Move on…

I found it increasingly sad as more facts came to light that Kabuo didn’t even feel able to defend himself. That no matter what he said he knew they would twist it into an admission of guilt. When the reality is, Kabuo was not guilty. He helped a friend out. He was the last person to see that man alive. But he was too afraid to come forward with any information because he knew how much prejudice that small town held for his ethnicity. He knew that no matter what he said they would decide he was guilty, kill him and move on as if nothing had happened. Ishmael almost had the choice made for him, he was sitting on that evidence and there was 1 person. ONE in the entire jury who wasn’t quite ready to say okay this man did it, when given the evidence there was plenty of room for doubt. He could have, he could not have. 

All in all it was an enraging and beautiful read. A window into the aftermath of a terrible time in history, which in and of itself feels like it was a terrible time in history. I also had no idea how the author was planning to stretch a short few day trial into that long of a novel, which all I have to say is bravo, while I skimmed through some parts where it felt a little to factual for my particular taste, the story was not dragged out tediously over the pages. It needed the exact amount of pages it had. 

“Snow Falling on Cedars” by David Guterson

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Snow_Falling_on_Cedars/fUcYLRN8smcC?hl=en&gbpv=0