logo

 

 

Executive Times

 

 

 

 

 

2008 Book Reviews

 

The Commoner by John Burnham Schwartz

Rating:

***

 

(Recommended)

 

 

 

Click on title or picture to buy from amazon.com

 

 

 

Interior

 

John Burnham Schwartz bases his new novel, The Commoner, on the life of Japan’s Empress Michiko, who was the first commoner to marry into the imperial family. While fictional, The Commoner presents considerable detail about Japanese imperial life, both in external practices and for his protagonist, Haruko Tsuneyasu, a rich interior life that provides much of the momentum for the novel. Here’s an excerpt, from the end of Chapter 3, pp. 38-40:

 

"I hear he’s grown three centimeters this summer alone," my mother remarked. She was sitting at the low table arranging the flowers she'd just bought in the Machi, Karuizawa's main shopping street. Flower arrangement was one of her most accomplished arts, though she wasn't doing her best at the moment, dis­tracted as she was by the idea of the Prince's summer growth spurt.

"You mean there's more to him than meets the eye?" my father said. He was sitting on the tatami, his back to the wall, perusing some business papers through a pair of reading spectacles. It had been raining for days, and the air in the house felt like miso paste lathered on the skin.

My mother glared at him as though personally in­sulted. "You mustn't speak that way about His Highness."

"Then you mean there's less to him?" My father winked at me.

"I don't find that amusing." She clipped an iris stem by a third. "It's disrespectful."

"Not at all. By almost every account he's a fine young man. I'm simply trying to figure out why I should care that he's three centimeters taller than he was in May."

"I'm saying it for Haruko's benefit."

"Haruko, eh? Well, that's different. Why didn't you say so in the first place?"

"You're just as impossible as she is!" My mother spiked a last flower into the bowl of polished black pebbles, gath­ered a handful of clipped stems, and walked out of the room.

"Better to be impossible than measured in centimeters!" my father called after her, grinning at me now. There was no answer from the other end of the house. Amused, he grunted contentedly, removed his spectacles, and rubbed his eyes. Without the bracing frames of steel and glass, his face looked suddenly old and vulnerable to me, and my smile disappeared.

"Haruko-chan, are you all right?" He hadn't called me by that childish endearment in many years.

"I thought I heard a bird in the other room," I lied. "But there's nothing there now."

"Well, that's good—I'm getting too old to rescue birds. Soon they'll have to start rescuing me." He folded his glasses and put them in his pocket. "I wonder if this rain will ever stop." He got to his feet, straightening his papers, one of his knees making a sound like a rice cracker snapped in two. He moved and stood near me. Through the open shoji were the trees dripping with rain, but be­cause of the mist no mountains were visible.

"So," he said, "do you really care?"

"Do I care about what?"

"The three centimeters."

I wheeled around and pinched his stomach.

"Eh! Sharp fingers."

"See how sharp if you keep saying silly things." "That's my daughter for you."

He was smiling. He would have allowed no one else to speak to him this way. And he took my ear tenderly be­tween his thumb and forefinger as he used to when I was small.

 

The Commoner is a beautifully written novel that takes readers into an unfamiliar world.

 

Steve Hopkins, September 20, 2008

 

 

Buy The Commoner

@ amazon.com

Go To Hopkins & Company Homepage

 

 

Go to 2008 Book Shelf

Go to Executive Times Archives

 

Go to The Big Book Shelf: All Reviews

 

 

 

 

*    2008 Hopkins and Company, LLC

 

The recommendation rating for this book appeared

 in the October 2008 issue of Executive Times

 

URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/The Commoner.htm

 

For Reprint Permission, Contact:

Hopkins & Company, LLC • 723 North Kenilworth AvenueOak Park, IL 60302
Phone: 708-466-4650 • Fax: 708-386-8687

E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com

www.hopkinsandcompany.com