The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng 334 pages 9781602861800

This was quite a unique read in comparison to the many, many vampire / dystopia / horror teen books that I read this year. I discovered it on one of the best of the year lists. In this historical fiction novel a 28 year old survivor of a Japanese internment camp during WWII, Yun Ling Teoh finds the only Japanese garden in her native Malaya. Her quest is to create a garden in the memory of her beloved sister who died in the same interment camp. There happy memory of a trip to a Japanese garden before the war becomes their mental escape from the horrors of the camp. Only Yun Ling Teoh is not a gardener and it is supremely difficult for her to approach Nakamura Aritomo, the former gardener for the Emperor of Japan (and creator of the Malayan garden) and ask for his help. He refuses to create a garden for her but agrees to take her on as a student. He bans books and paper and pens telling her that she needs to learn to garden through the physical labor of intense gardening.While working under Aritomo, she experiences flashbacks to camp memories. Artitomo is not just a mere landscape artist, but also a tattoo artist. The book has two time lines. The first is her tutorage under Aritomo and the second is her return many years later as an aged judge fighting a degenerative brain disease that threatens to rob her of her memories. Aritomo is a fascinating Yodo like character.