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The Scent Of Sake (2009)

by Joyce Chapman Lebra(Favorite Author)

3.2 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

0061662372 (ISBN13: 9780061662379)

languge

English

genre

Historical Fiction

publisher

William Morrow Paperbacks

review 1: The topic of the book--an account of the daughter of a sake brewer in 19th century Japan and her struggle to control the destiny of the family business--is intriguing, but the writing style is frustrating in the extreme. The main character often feels like a 21st century Western woman plunked into feudal Japan, and there are numerous awkward places where characters explain Japanese culture and history to each other in way that feels utterly artificial. "It's so important to keep our communication with the ancestors, the Buddhas, just as we see to the continuity of the house with our heirs," the heroine's father says, speaking through Rie directly to us, and I get knocked right out of the story. It's a delicate balance to introduce readers to cultural issues that all the... more other characters know (I suppose this is why outsider characters are so common when writing about an unknown culture) but this book didn't keep the balance well enough for me.
review 2: I really wanted to like this book and in a way I did enjoy it. But towards the middle of the book it became a task to read, it was boring! It read more like a business manual than a book. And I'm still a little confused how she went from being a "woman" to practically running the joint when her father and his workers always brushed her aside. Plus it was said when she anonymously submitted her ideas that her father never knew it was her...how did he figure it out? By the end of the book it felt like it fell flat, it was a happy ending...but it was a boring ending just like the rest of the book. less

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