Snow Falling on Cedars: A Novel

Snow Falling on Cedars: A Novel
by David Guterson

List Price: ~~$14.95~~
Our Price: $0.70
You Save: $14.25 (95%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions

Book Summary Information

Author: David Guterson
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 1995-09-26
ISBN: 067976402X
Number of pages: 460
Publisher: Vintage

Book Reviews of Snow Falling on Cedars: A Novel

Book Review: An interesting book
Summary: 3 Stars

What I enjoyed most about this novel was Mr. Guterson's facility with descriptive language. I just loved the snow storm--though I also thought he had his characters moving around in it entirely too much--and I liked his casually elegant way of getting into his characters' heads and hearts to explain their histories.

So why only 3 stars? Because I was ultimately unconvinced by the book. By that, I mean that he wasn't as successful as he should have been in intertwining the book's themes of war, family, and racism (especially the latter). By the time the book ended, I didn't much care about the outcome. That's why I wasn't bothered by its truncated, too easy ending. The event that facilitates the ending was extremely contrived, and even drawn out too much.

Mr. Guterson has some serious talent, though. This book just didn't awe me as much as I thought (based on other reviews) that it would.

Write your own review

More Snow Falling on Cedars: A Novel reviews:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Summary of Snow Falling on Cedars: A Novel

Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award

American Booksellers Association Book of the Year Award

San Piedro Island, north of Puget Sound, is a place so isolated that no one who lives there can afford to make enemies.??But in 1954 a local fisherman is found suspiciously drowned, and a Japanese American named Kabuo Miyamoto is charged with his murder.??In the course of the ensuing trial, it becomes clear that what is at stake is more than a man's guilt. For on San Pedro, memory grows as thickly as cedar trees and the fields of ripe strawberries--memories of a charmed love affair between a white boy and the Japanese girl who grew up to become Kabuo's wife; memories of land desired, paid for, and lost. Above all, San Piedro is haunted by the memory of what happened to its Japanese residents during World War II, when an entire community was sent into exile while its neighbors watched.??Gripping, tragic, and densely atmospheric, Snow Falling on Cedars is a masterpiece of suspense-- one that leaves us shaken and changed.

"Haunting.... A whodunit complete with courtroom maneuvering and surprising turns of evidence and at the same time a mystery, something altogether richer and deeper."--Los Angeles Times

"Compelling...heartstopping. Finely wrought, flawlessly written."--The New York Times Book Review

This is the kind of book where you can smell and hear and see the fictional world the writer has created, so palpably does the atmosphere come through. Set on an island in the straits north of Puget Sound, in Washington, where everyone is either a fisherman or a berry farmer, the story is nominally about a murder trial. But since it's set in the 1950s, lingering memories of World War II, internment camps and racism helps fuel suspicion of a Japanese-American fisherman, a lifelong resident of the islands. It's a great story, but the primary pleasure of the book is Guterson's renderings of the people and the place.

General Books

Book Subjects

Most talked about in General Books

Al Este de Las Montanas
by David Guterson
Debate; Published: 2001-06; Paperback; Book
Best price: $76.90

Der Auf Zedern Fallt Schnee
by David Guterson
Wilhelm Goldmann Verlag GmbH; Published: 1998-02-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $29.06

Our Lady of the Forest
by David Guterson
Vintage; Published: 2004-07-27; Paperback; Book
Best price: $0.01
Price in other shops: ~~$13.00~~

Drowned Son (Bloomsbury Birthday Quids)
by David Guterson
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC; Published: 1996-09-19; Paperback; Book
Best price: $24.05

The Other
by David Guterson
Random House Audio; Published: 2008-06-03; Audio CD; Book
Best price: $20.95
Price in other shops: ~~$39.95~~

East of the Mountains
by David Guterson
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC; Published: 2000-05-08; Paperback; Book
Best price: $1.94
Price in other shops: ~~$14.45~~

The Country Ahead of Us, The Country Behind
by David Guterson
Vintage; Published: 1996-04-30; Paperback; Book
Best price: $0.01
Price in other shops: ~~$11.95~~

East of the Mountains
by David Guterson
Random House Audio; Published: 1999-04-20; Audio Cassette; Book
Best price: $2.00
Price in other shops: ~~$25.00~~

Snow Falling on Cedars
by David Guterson
Chivers Audio Books; Published: 1996-04; Audio Cassette; Book
Best price: $6.77
Price in other shops: ~~$84.95~~

Vintage Modern Classics
by Chris Bohjalian, Bernard Schlink, David Guterson, Arthur Golden, Charles Frazier, Ernest Gaines
Vintage Pr; Paperback; Book
Price in other shops: ~~$77.00~~

Similar Books and other products

The Other
by David Guterson
Knopf; Published: 2008-06-03; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $7.32
Price in other shops: ~~$24.95~~

The Things They Carried
by Tim O'Brien
Broadway; Published: 1998-12-29; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.74
Price in other shops: ~~$14.95~~

A Lesson Before Dying (Oprah's Book Club)
by Ernest J. Gaines
Vintage; Published: 1997-09; Paperback; Book
Best price: $1.43
Price in other shops: ~~$12.95~~

Their Eyes Were Watching God
by Zora Neale Hurston
Published: 1998-12-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.66
Price in other shops: ~~$13.95~~

The Handmaid's Tale: A Novel
by Margaret Atwood
Anchor; Published: 1998-03-16; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.99
Price in other shops: ~~$14.95~~

The Great Gatsby
by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Scribner; Published: 1999-09-30; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.90
Price in other shops: ~~$14.00~~

Cliffs Notes on Guterson's Snow Falling on Cedars
by Richard P. Wasowski
Cliffs Notes; Published: 2000-04-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $2.57
Price in other shops: ~~$5.99~~