David Guterson

This is an elegantly written novel about old age and death, looking back and hardly bearing to look forward. Dr. Ben Givens, a retired surgeon, learns he has terminal colon cancer and decides to take one last hunting trip with his two dogs and stage an elaborate accident for his suicide so as not to cause grief to his family. His wife died a year or so before and he sees only pain and suffering in the future as he declines. Things do not go according to plan, despite his careful show more preparations. The journey is back to where he was a child on a farm with orchards and cherries. Some of the novel is a typical road trip journey peppered with chance encounters with characters. Other chapters he looks back on his life in the Second World War and meeting his wife. His writing switches between the small stuff, what he ate, how things felt to the big landscape he is in. This isn't a landscape I know but David Guterson draws it well and beautifully. show less

[East of The Mountains] - David Guterson
5+★

It’s about a dying man’s final journey through a landscape that has always sustained him and provided him with hope and challenges. When he discovers that he has terminal cancer, retired heart surgeon Ben Givens refuses to simply sit back and wait. Instead he takes his two beloved dogs and goes on a last hunt, determined to end his life on his own terms. But as the people he meets and the memories over which he lingers remind him of the show more mystery of life’s endurance, his trek into the American West becomes much more than a final journey.

I first read this author’s [Snow Falling on Cedars] and really, really enjoyed it....so I looked forward to reading this one and I was in no way disappointed. He knows how to tell a story and make the reader feel the joy or the pain of his characters. As with all books there may be some sections that some readers will want to skim through I skipped through a lot of Ben’s service record in WWII…but it certainly took nothing away from the journey that Ben decided to make, and that is really what the story is about. Ben is almost dead when he and his dogs start the journey back to the east side of the mountains. He knows he’s more than likely not coming back… he expects to die…but he will do it on his own terms…just the way he has lived his life. Ben asks the question that the book poses throughout…”When all that has given joy and meaning to life has ebbed through death and change in our final years, what is the point of living?” It's thought provoking. Sometimes comforting and sometimes painful, but I don’t believe I have ever read a book that presents a more powerful challenge…daring the reader to put themselves for 279 pages in the shoes of Ben Givens and answer that question. show less

Kabuo Miyamoto, a Japanese-American and son of a deceased strawberry farmer, stands accused of killing Carl Heine, a salmon fisherman. Both were boyhood friends and residents of the island of San Piedro in the Pacific Northwest. Ishmael, a one-armed reporter, watches the trial with difficulty as he was once (and possibly still is) very much in love with Miyamoto's wife Hatsue. All evidence points to Miyamoto as murderer, but Miyamoto insists that he's innocent. A long-standing disagreement show more about land ownership has troubled the relationship between the Heine and Miyamoto. Further complicating this situation was the background of World War II, an historical period in which "Japs" were deemed "the enemy". As the mystery of the death slowly unravels, the reader is sensitized to the prejudice experienced by those of the Japanese culture in the largely Caucasian world of the island on which they live.

Snow Falling on Cedars is a superb novel, simply told, yet haunting in its imagery and sensuality. One can feel the power and elegant beauty of the snowstorm which pervades the entire novel. Not only does the story capture the reader's interest in trying to unravel the mystery of the death, but it also sparks a desire to learn about the Japanese culture in greater depth. show less

The only part I liked was the historic insight into WWII-related racism. I felt there could have been a lot more on the discrepancy between the anti-Japanese sentiment and the obvious hypocrisy in having zero self-awareness from the German immigrants.

The way women are written is absolute garbage. Hatsue is written so passively, and in no way would any woman just be like “I understand” if her high school ex-boyfriend withheld evidence that could exonerate her husband for a full day show more because, well, if her husband got executed by the state, then it’d free her up
to be with him again. Truly psychopath behavior. It would have made more sense if she had never spoken to him again.

There is also the most extraneous detail I have ever encountered this side of a Tolkien novel. The reader did not need to know the three-generation backstory of every fictional family on San Piedro Island, nor did the detailed description of furniture in every room give any added depth to the story. If anything, it felt like the author was trying to assert control over the reader’s imagination. show less