Snow Country. Yasunari Kawabata, (Paperback)

from amelish

Much is made of a pivotal scene towards the end of the book, when Shimamura switches from calling Komako "a good girl" to calling her "a good woman." The introduction calls out this change in tone as the climax of the novel. I spent some time teasing out the differences between those two phrases ...

from gypsysmom

As I read this book I couldn't help reflecting on the large gap between Eastern and Western cultures. Or at least there was at the time this book was written which was (mostly) prior to World War II. Westerners really don't have an equivalent to the geisha; perhaps the French with their mistresse...

from PZR

I read Kawabata's 'The Master of Go' and rather enjoyed it. This short novel I admired rather than enjoyed. In theory, I should have loved it as it contained all the right ingredients - doomed love story, poetic prose, anti-heroic characters, evocative setting, etc. - but I found it took me a lon...

from Morgan_Mott

I don't think I got the full impact of this book by reading a translation. The poetry of the narrative was beautiful, although I frequently found myself wondering which character was being described. Since the poetry and NOT the plot is supposedly the main focus of this novel, it was somewhat of ...

from SqueakyChu

I know that this is supposed to be Kawabata's finest work, but it didn't appeal all that much to me. What I liked about it was the description of the snow country. However, had I not read the introduction to the book, I would have missed out on the significance of this area of Japan. I also didn'...