A Zen Romance: One Woman's Adventures in a Monastery

by Deborah Boliver Boehm

Book Overview

A Zen Romance is a look back at one young woman's search for true love and deeper meaning in and around a Buddhist temple in the Kyoto of the 1960s. Boehm was a college student with a philosophical... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 4770020325
• ISBN13: 9784770020321
• Release Date: January 1996
• Publisher: Kodansha
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.6" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Sushi for the Soul

Far from being a self-aggrandizing memoir, a travelogue or a spiritual manual, this book reads like a rich, delicious novel. Sandra Boliver Boehm writes with a sense of humor about her college-age self, and with meticulous and sensual detail about her experiences in Japan in the 1970's. Her descriptions of the food she ate are enough to make a reader crave sushi every night. This is a phenominal coming-of-age tale, and a must for any intelligent young woman with a lust for adventure.

I wanted to give it SIX!

Some of the most exquisite writing I've ever encountered. This delightful memoir is quizzical, poignant, sparkling, honest and brilliant. It conveys the feel of a youthful search for spiritual adventure while unconsciously brimming with maturity and a rare kind of courage, both earthy and lofty. I'm eager for more, much more, from this exceptionally witty, literate and lyrical voice.

A vivid recounting of a young American woman's time in Kyoto

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. I have strong ambivalencies about the time I spent living in Japan, but reading this book evoked such strong, nostalgic images of all that is right and true about Japanese culture that I was ready to hop the next plane. I only wish that I had had her apparently excellent Japanese language skills, the more romantic locale of Kyoto over the more industrial Kobe where I lived, and the better luck with Japanese men!