Book Review: The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng

From the first page, the beautiful writing drew me into this story. The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng opened our new season at my book group. What a wonderful read. The story opens in Malaysia as Judge Teoh is taking an early retirement from the bench in Kuala Lumpur. Returning to the Cameron Mountains, she plans to go Yugiri, the Garden of Evening Mists. She reunites with Frederick Pretronis on Majuba Tea Estates neighbouring Yugiri. 

Judge Yun Ling Teoh is returning to the Garden to recover her past and honour her sister. They had both been in a Japanese internment camp when she was nineteen and was the only surviving member of this brutal camp. Later she was a research clerk in the War Crimes Tribunal while waiting admission to law school at Cambridge University in 1949. Her early retirement was prompted by early signs of dementia. Yun Ling begins to write her memories that span forty years from World War II through the early 1950’s and into the 1980’s before they are lost to her.

Yun Ling’s story unfolds in layers of present and past, much like the layers in the Japanese gardens that she and her sister loved. The memory of the gardens that kept them alive in the camp. Yugiri was designed and cared for by Arimoto, who was once the gardener to the Japanese emperor.  Yun Ling, despite her hatred of all Japanese, determined to keep her promise to her sister to create a Japanese garden.

Spontaneity in her life was as contrived as the outlines of Yurigi, whose stone placements, foliage and pathways were designed and placed with thought only to the image. Beneath the surface of the present images designed to deceive, lay feelings of hatred, anger, and the guilt that only a survivor knows. The principle of shakkei or borrowed scenery is the use of nearby or distant landscapes, including the sky, is used in Japanese gardening. This principle seems to be a part of Yun Ling’s whole story.  The past, the present and memory all shaped her story without intent.

Winner of the Man Asian Literary Prize, The Garden of Evening Mists is a book I will read again.

“Memory is like patches of sunlight in an overcast valley, 

shifting with the movement of the clouds. Now and then 

the light will fall on a particular point in time, illuminating 

it for a moment before the wind seals up the gap, 

and the world is in shadows again.”

~ Tan Twan Eng, The Garden of Evening Mists

Title:  The Garden of Evening Mists
Author:  Tan Twan Eng
Publisher: Weinstein Books
Publication Date: 2012
Format:  Soft Cover
ISBN: 978-1-60286-180-0 (pbk.)
ISBN: 978-1-60286-181-7 (e-book)
Type:  Fiction