Plum Wine

By Angela Davis-Gardner

Book Overview

Bottles of homemade plum wine link two worlds, two eras, and two lives through the eyes of Barbara Jefferson, a young American teaching at a Tokyo university. When her surrogate mother, Michi, dies, Barbara inherits an extraordinary gift: a tansu chest filled with bottles of homemade plum wine wrapped in sheets of rice paper covered in elegant calligraphy--one bottle for each of the last twenty years of Michi's life. Why did Michi leave her memoirs to Barbara, who cannot read Japanese? Seeking a translator, Barbara turns to an enigmatic pottery artist named Seiji, who will offer her a companionship as tender as it is forbidden. But as the two lovers unravel the mysteries of Michi's life, a story that draws them through the aftermath of World War II and the hidden world of the hibakusha, Hiroshima survivors, Barbara begins to suspect that Seiji may be hiding the truth about Michi's past--and a heartbreaking secret of his own.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0385340834
• ISBN13: 9780385340830
• Release Date: March 2007
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.3" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

A lovely and haunting story

This is a gorgeous, infectious novel that is impossible to put down. Absolutely one of the best books I've read recently. The story follows young Barbara Jefferson, an American teaching in Japan in 1966. Michiko Nakamoto, her mentor at the university, dies and leaves Barbara a tansu chest filled with bottles of homemade plum wine, each dated with a year. Barbara finds that the chest contains a host of secrets and mysteries. She struggles to unravel the threads of Michiko's life story. Barbara's tale is utterly compelling. First of all, the author's writing style is so lush and lovely that it gives the whole novel something of a dream-like atmosphere. Barbara comes to understand and respect Japanese culture, falls in love and discovers the horrors of Hiroshima. It's a wonderful tale that you won't soon forget. Highly recommended.

Plum Wine

This was one of the best books I have read this year. It is beautifully written, with wonderful imagery. The story and mystery unfolds as a young naiive American is teaching at a private girls school in Japan during the Vietnam war. She is given a cabinet filled with homemade wine by a woman who had befriended her and subsequently she is drawn into a web of secrets involving people she has gotten close to regarding what happened in Hiroshima during WW2. But it is also about mothers and daughters and the unique relationship they have. I highly recommend it.

Thought-provoking novel

This beautifully written, multi-layered novel takes place in Japan during the Vietnam War era. It sensitively portrays the horror of the Hiroshima bombing and its aftermath. While it begs questions regarding American foreign policy, it is not polemic. Excellent book!

Everything you could want from a novel

Davis-Gardner may have pulled off this year's most entertaining book with the greatest number of irons in the fire--history, culture, literature and all that, but what keeps the pages turning is a good old-fashioned mystery, a morality play of trust and betrayal, of guilt and shame and secrets, a clash of civilizations and, yeah, even I got caught up in the romance (which was steamy as a Japanese bathhouse...) I started it sort of thinking, "Here we go, another Japan book," but found I was learning all kinds of new things from different, unwritten-about perspectives. I read it in two sittings. Couldn't put it down. What a gem--I hope a major house picks up the paperback so it can get the notice it deserves.

A moving story, sadly timeless in its message

The horrors of war continue to be repeated from generation to generation. This exceptionally well told story allows us to feel the numbing sadness that blankets the lives of survivors of the American bombing of Hiroshima. The descriptions of the bombing itself, however, almost pale beside the agonies that follow as survivors live out their lives haunted by what they have endured, shamed by the fact of their survival, and tortured by their efforts to somehow fulfill their obligation to honor those who have been lost. Angela Davis-Gardner combines the beauty of a love story with the pain the each character endures, not only relating to Hiroshima, but also to other losses and disappointments of life. Barbara comes to Japan on a personal journey in search of the essence of her mother, during the height of the Vietnam War. The juxtaposition of World War II and the American involvement in Vietnam provides a brilliant setting for Davis-Gardner's examination of truth, honor, morality, love, and pain. Her characters are memorable and the questions she raises,sadly, continue to be highly relevant, and worthy of our contemplation. An amazing, thought-provoking, beautiful read.