{"id":26676,"date":"2012-08-20T08:31:49","date_gmt":"2012-08-20T12:31:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/?p=26676"},"modified":"2012-08-20T13:14:05","modified_gmt":"2012-08-20T17:14:05","slug":"jq-magazine-book-review-orchards-is-elegant-powerful-profound","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/2012\/08\/20\/jq-magazine-book-review-orchards-is-elegant-powerful-profound\/","title":{"rendered":"JQ Magazine: Book Review \u2013 \u2018Orchards\u2019 Is Elegant, Powerful, Profound"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

“‘Orchards’ is at once a celebration of life and a somber reflection on the choices we make and their often irrevocable consequences.”\u00a0(Random House)<\/p><\/div>\n

By\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>Sharona Moskowitz<\/em><\/strong><\/a>\u00a0(<\/strong>Fukuoka-ken<\/em><\/strong><\/a>,\u00a02000-01) for\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>JQ\u00a0magazine<\/em><\/strong><\/a>. Sharona is interested in fresh, new voices in fiction and creative nonfiction.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/em><\/strong>Meet Kanako Goldberg. Half Japanese, half Jewish, the teenage narrator of\u00a0Holly Thompson<\/a>\u2019s breathtaking 2011 novel\u00a0Orchards<\/em><\/a>\u00a0is more bagels and lox than natto and rice. After the suicide of her classmate in New York, Kanako is sent by her Japanese mother to spend the summer with her relatives on their mikan farm in a rural village tucked beneath the shadows of Mount Fuji. The trip to Japan is not only a chance to bond with her Japanese kin, it\u2019s something of a temporary exile, a time to reflect on her life and her classmate\u2019s untimely death at a safe geographical remove.<\/p>\n

The victim\u2019s name was Ruth and she is evoked repeatedly throughout the novel in the second person, as if to haunt the reader as much as she seems to be haunting Kanako\u2019s conscience. Who was Ruth? What exactly was the extent of her suffering and how long did she have to endure before making the desperate decision to take her own life? Slowly we learn about Ruth\u2019s battle with bipolar disorder and the unfortunate events that prompted her to do the unthinkable.<\/p>\n

Despite her remorse, Kanako was not exactly the bully. She was more of a neutral bystander neither provoking nor defending the tortured teen, though in retrospect she feels just as culpable as Lisa, Ruth\u2019s lead tormentor. (Lisa\u2019s own fate, which I won\u2019t give away here, adds an unexpected twist to the story.)<\/p>\n

The tragic event took place in an apple orchard, a place where the cycle of death and rebirth is in plain, colorful view. While this metaphor might seem forced or terribly obvious, so elegant is Thompson\u2019s language and so powerful and gentle her analogies that the overall effect is profound and genuinely moving.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Kanako\u2019s life during the summer on the mikan farm feels at first like cruel and unusual punishment. She is made to wake at the crack of dawn to strip the fruit trees, follow a diet that\u2019s unfamiliar and to her, insubstantial, and bathe in the same twice-used bathwater as her uncle and cousin. She reacts by sneaking sweets from a secret stash she has hidden away, a habit that causes her even more guilt and self-censure.<\/p>\n

The farm\u2019s daily routine is demanding and full of activity, though Ruth is never far from Kanako\u2019s thoughts. Her guilt festers beneath the surface as the dead girl\u2019s ghost seems to hijack her every thought, particularly around the time of Obon, the Japanese festival in which families convene to commemorate their deceased ancestors. Kanako observes the lit paper lanterns meant to guide the path for the spirits to return and wonders, \u201cIf we could invite distant spirits to join in the celebrations here and if I did invite you, Ruth\u2026would you come?\u201d<\/p>\n

In what is arguably one of the novel\u2019s most striking scenes, Kanako\u2019s inner conflict plays out when she observes a female Japanese middle school student being taunted by a group of classmates. Her own experience with Ruth is automatically conjured and, as if in a plea for penance, she tries desperately to befriend the girl. As one might expect, though, the bullied teen is timid and psychologically scarred, refusing Kanako\u2019s overtures in a stark reminder that there are no do-overs in life.<\/p>\n

Thompson chooses her words with great care for maximum impact and as a result, her streamlined prose is almost deceptively spare.\u00a0Orchards<\/em>\u00a0is at once a celebration of life and a somber reflection on the choices we make and their often irrevocable consequences. With its strong narrative voice and poetic style, the novel is an argument against keeping silent when speaking up would be the right thing to do.\u00a0Orchards<\/em>\u00a0is truly a stunning display of language and a much-needed piece of advice writ large.<\/p>\n

Visit Holly\u2019s homepage at\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>www.hatbooks.com<\/em><\/strong><\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Sharona Moskowitz\u00a0(Fukuoka-ken,\u00a02000-01) for\u00a0JQ\u00a0magazine. Sharona is interested in fresh, new voices in fiction and creative nonfiction. Meet Kanako Goldberg. Half Japanese, half Jewish, the teenage narrator of\u00a0Holly Thompson\u2019s breathtaking 2011 novel\u00a0Orchards\u00a0is more bagels and lox than natto and rice. After the suicide of her classmate in New York, Kanako is sent by her Japanese mother to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,40,291,58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articlejournalism","category-books","category-jq-magazine","category-reviews"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkZ7m-6Wg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26676"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26676\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26736,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26676\/revisions\/26736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}