Status
Call number
Genres
Publication
DDC/MDS
813.54 |
Description
Illustrated throughout with beautiful calligraphy,The Fourth Treasureis an original, surprising novel that weaves a suspenseful love story across and through two very different countries, cultures, and generations. Tina Suzuki has just begun her first year of graduate study at the UC Berkeley Institute for Brain and Behavior Studies. Born and raised in San Francisco by her Japanese immigrant mother, Tina knows nothing about the rest of her family, and very little about her cultural heritage. But when her boyfriend’s Japanese calligraphy teacher suffers a stroke and loses his ability to communicate but continues to create magnificent calligraphic art, Tina knows she has stumbled across an ideal research subject. However, getting the sensei to participate in her study poses a series of uncomfortable obstacles for Tina: the jealous opposition of her boyfriend, the political and (romantic) minefield of dealing with her professors and fellow students, and the willful reticence of her ailing mother. It seems that the blank personal history her mother had always presented is in fact a tightly wound scroll full of scandalous secrets. In ways she could have never expected, Tina’s studies will inevitably lead to revelations about her own family. Juxtaposed with Tina’s story is that of the stricken sensei as a younger man, in Kyoto, and the history of the ancient inkstone he carries with him. The inkstone’s history, and the sensei’s art, reach back hundreds of years into a Japanese culture that no longer exists but that continues to reverberate on both sides of the Pacific. As the dual narratives unfold, they are enhanced by intriguing marginalia that illuminate both the sensei’s Japanese calligraphy and Tina’s studies of the brain. The result is a unique, unusually satisfying literary experience.… (more)
User reviews
And it has the story of the teacher's past, and the student's mother's past, and the student's life outside of studying all mixed up in there, to make it into an actual book rather than 'ooh neuroscience is shiny! The End.', which is all good too. The student's boyfriend is American, but he knows more about Japanese culture and language and things like that than she does, even though she's Japanese-American.
So yeah. Good book :)
The book is illustrated by calligraphy (which in Japan, is regarded as both art and a means of communication). Many pages also contain sidebars: these are not footnotes since they
The Daizen Inkstone is an inanimate object with a long history, and is of great value. All the people we meet in the book are affected by its presence.