Don't judge a book by its movie commericials

For a gift several years ago, a friend gave me Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson. I hadn’t read it because I thought that (based on commercials I had seen for the movie) it was just a tragic romance. Since, she’s continually asked me if I had read it yet, and every time I said no I could sense she was disappointed by my lack of enthusiasm for a book she really loved and a gift she spent time in choosing. Finally, after feeling a little guilty, I picked it up during a very snowy few days (my first blizzard). I’d been so sick of all the snow, and I was in the mood for something a little depressing. Also, now that I had experienced a real winter, I felt that I could truly understand the wintry, damp landscape on which the story is written. Just a few pages into the story, I realized how wrong I had been and was reminded of the old adage: never judge a book by its movie.

Beautifully written, the story is not just about lost love and time, but about a secluded town off the coast of Washington struggling with racism, war, and change. In America, it seems that our race problems are only black and white, and Guterson reminds us of an all-too-often forgotten moment in our history when we destroyed the lives of thousands of Japanese. But though this thread is important, the story is about people and how we often fail to cope with pain, and the ripple affect singular moments can have on us and the people around us.

The story’s main plot involves a Japanese man accused of murdering a white fisherman, and as the past unfolds and the present is examined, the central mystery unravels. But this is not the only reason the story is “gripping.” There are so many lives wrapped up in this moment--people who are forced to see the past for what it was, and try (though some fail) to learn and heal.

Because I’ve always grown up in the busy suburbs of California, I could never entirely understand the idea that there are/were places where everyone tries to know, watch, and judge your every move. But in this story, Guterson does not make this idea foreign or old fashioned nor does he write with nostalgia; it is merely a natural occurrence on a small island, born of a place and a time. And, that is just how he writes the story, as if every character is living and breathing, and their actions natural. The story is not overly emotional or heart-wrenching nor is the ending is perfectly wrapped up. The reader is satisfied, but it is not as if the characters’ lives end where the story ends. It feels like the characters have gone on living and growing.

Above all the story reminds us that no man is island. We need people, we are part of each other, but despite our need, what’s truly hard, is that we cannot and will never really know each other.

“The heart of any other, because it had a will, would remain forever mysterious.”