The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng

Summary from www.goodreads.com:

 Malaya, 1951. Yun Ling Teoh, the scarred lone survivor of a brutal Japanese wartime camp, seeks solace among the jungle-fringed tea plantations of Cameron Highlands.

 There she discovers Yugiri, the only Japanese garden in Malaya, and its owner and creator, the enigmatic Aritomo, exiled former gardener of the emperor of Japan.

 Despite her hatred of the Japanese, Yun Ling seeks to engage Aritomo to create a garden in memory of her sister, who died in the camp. Aritomo refuses but agrees to accept Yun Ling as his apprentice "until the monsoon comes." Then she can design a garden for herself.

As the months pass, Yun Ling finds herself intimately drawn to the gardener and his art, while all around them a communist guerilla war rages. But the "Garden of Evening Mists" remains a place of mystery.

 Who is Aritomo and how did he come to leave Japan? And is the real story of how Yun Ling managed to survive the war perhaps the darkest secret of all?

My Comments :

I have been looking forward to get my hands on this book since I read its review ..however the price was just out of my budget. My thanks to Nylusmilk for helping me to get this book from Bookalicious at Summit USJ

This is another book which I found hard to finish. Its not that the book is hard to read or uninteresting but the opposite is true. I hate to have it end.

There are just so many plots and sub plots going on in this book and they are wonderfully incorporated into the story.

It leave me longing for more. I cant help feeling that I might have miss out something important in this book. Maybe that's why it took me so long to finish it. I kept going back re-reading some of the paragraphs to try and see if there is any other meaning behind it.

Although it involved the time of Japanese occupation which in most books involves blood and gory but in this book its different. Though there are some awful situation but these are soften and made poetic to me.

Am not good with words but I think this would appeal to many who loves this genre

Am giving this book 5 stars