The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka
A Book Review
This skinny little historical fiction intrigued me. It's not often that a novel is told from the point of view of a slew of women. It is a collective viewpoint, speaking with the voices of many; not following the usual formula for a fiction novel where the voice is from one or two or three characters. Initially I found it difficult
to follow; like a dozen different stories were thrown in a blender for 20
seconds. My first impulse was to try to fix the story. To try to put the pieces back together so the various stories flowed smoothly. This made my initial
reading experience a lot more tedious than I was used to. The thought crossed my mind more than once
that I should find a dozen (or more) different coloured highlighters, go
through the book and highlight references to each character‘s life so that I could
follow their individual stories. It was
a library book. So I didn’t.
In the end I was glad that my reverence for borrowed
materials stopped me from defacing the book. I began to understand why Otsuka wrote it as
she did. While the style of this book
stopped me from identifying with any one individual, I began to identify with
the people group as a whole. Which is
what I believe was her main goal in writing as she did.
In some ways I think that by pushing the reader away from
any one story line, one might almost begin to place themselves in the story. Because of my need to connect with an
individual character (and my inability to do so due to the reading style) I began
to insert my personality into the various stages of the collective’s lives and
imagine how I would react to the situations; crossing the ocean with hopes and dreams, discovering that your husband is not all he advertised himself as, learning to adjust to a new culture where your station in life has changed drastically, dealing with racism and discrimination, being driven from my home because of my race. While I may do this to some extent with every book I read, I did it a
lot more with Buddhas.
Though I had a hard time envisioning any one character it
did not make them feel any less real as a whole. In life, people don’t exist in isolation (for
the most part, anyway). Like it or not,
the world is divided into people groups; communities, cultures, beliefs, living
standards, skin colour. While every
person belongs to more than one group and the definitions of groups change and
lines blur according to societal norms or the opinions of the observer, groups
still exist. And though the group in Buddhas is rather specific (ie. Japanese
mail brides in the early 20th century and the human rights
violations done to the community in America during WWII) viewing the story of
the group as a whole gives, what could be considered, a more reliable viewpoint
than just one story. Instead of opening
your heart a little bit to accommodate the story of one wronged woman, your
heart will grow three sizes that day.
Instead of one witness, there are many.
But back to the most important part: highlighter use. If I were to buy this book I think that I
would need two copies. One to read and
to leave as is, and one to highlight the heck out of.
