David Guterson - Snow Falling on Cedars

Pros: Slow descriptive novel highlighting a variety of interesting characters.
Cons: Sudden ending with odd philosophical end note.

Snow Falling on Cedars is a love story built around a courtroom drama and including a historical background following World War II (with flashbacks to the war years). It could be called a romance, crime, or historical novel, and it all those...

Pros: Not a long book
Cons: Tedious at times, too many flash-backs

Set in post WWll, David Guterson takes us through a first degree murder trial of Japanese-American, Kabuo Miyamoto. The year is 1954 on San Pedro Island off Puget Sound. Beautiful description of the region and the residents of Amity Harbor, the only...

Pros: Beautifully written, combining poetic and factual narrative. Moving, horrifying, evocative, engrossing.
Cons: Some readers may find it slow; graphic descriptions of battle/casualties may distress.

Snow falling on Cedars D Guterson. Fiction. First Vintage Contemporary Edition New York 1995. Paperback pp 460 $12.00 ISBN 0-679-76402-X Winner of the 1996 American Booksellers Book of the Year. Overview The story takes place on ...

Pros: Has everything - romance, intrigue, war
Cons: I truly cannot think of a thing I didn't like about it

Have you ever had a story told to you by a master storyteller? Have you ever sat for hours to listen to somebody tell you a story so intriguing that you hardly felt the passage of time and all that accompanies it? Have you ever heard a turn of phrase...

Pros: Wonderful story, both touching and serious at the same time
Cons: Can be somewhat choppy at times

When I wrote my review on "The Rape of Nanking", I talked about a horrible event that the Japanese to this day still have not admitted doing during their WWII occupation of China, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. At the same...

Pros: Demonstration of Emotions, Racism in characters involved in World War II.
Cons: Ends rather quickly, leaving the reader to decide many things themselves (a pro and con)

David Guterson's Snow Falling on Cedars is a blend of a novel about war, a love story, and a murder trial drama. These individual elements, when put together, tell the story of a post World War II island town off the coast of Washington. The emotions...

Pros: Well written, absorbing story
Cons: Somewhat predictable ending

The 1995 PEN/Faulkner award-winning “Snow Falling on Cedars” by David Guterson is set on San Piedro Island, an isolated island north of Puget Sound, circa 1954. The island is home to strawberry farmers and gill net fishermen. The story revolves around...

Pros: It has some compelling moments
Cons: Tiresome, plodding, rambling, repetitive

This book has some very compelling pages interspersed with great steaming piles of carefully crafted phrases that say nothing of interest. I love to read, and I do appreciate a well-turned phrase, but only if it expresses something I want to know about....

Pros: Beautiful language, engrossing story, moral dilemmas, great characters
Cons: love story does not end happily

Snow Falling on Cedars is a great book. It is set on the island of San Piedro, north of Washington, around World War II. The book opens in a courtroom where a Japanese fisherman is on trail for the murder of a white fisherman.

By the...

Pros: some nice language
Cons: the plot doesn't work at all.. the characters are atrocious

Agreeing with Petra who has already written a lovely piece finally helping me realize I wasn't the only person who didn't get this book.. let me me throw in my 2 cents.. ( And then 2 of you can read it, and I can GET my 2 cents.. HAHAH, I Kill me. Got a...

Pros: Beautifully worded descriptions, complex characters, intermingling stories that tie together into the main plot
Cons: predictable and abrupt ending

I was supposed to read Guterson's Snow Falling on Cedars as an assignment for my American Literature class, but, as I began to read it, I found myself glued to my seat, completely unwilling to put it down until I had read the very last word.

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Pros: The stunning array of characters, themes and ideas.
Cons: A bit of a slow-starter, takes a while to build up the reader's interest.

“Snow Falling on Cedars” is, it has to be said, a mightily impressive work. When you look at all the elements it contains, you cannot help but be impressed by the way in which Guterson has skilfully weaved all the elements of his powerful plot together....

Pros: Refined writing, good character development, suspenseful
Cons: Slow beginning

Like most books I read, this one was recommended by a friend. I had no idea what it was about and knew nothing about David Guterson. In addition, had just finished reading the incredible "Memoirs of a Geisha"and knew that the next book I read...

Pros: imagery and mysterious beautiful of the Pacific Northwest and human nature
Cons: few, if any

Growing up with a backyard full of towering cedar trees, even the title of this book suggested beauty and mystery to me. The visual images Guterson portrays are hauntingly real, from the fog rising off the Pacific waters to the cold jail cell and court...

Pros: Beautiful descriptive writing
Cons: Tends to grind after a bit

I opened this book on the bus one day. I had to read it for Literature, you see, so I wanted to make a head start. And it was amazing! I was plunged into a completely foreign world. I am English, town-dwelling, middle class, mainlander, and...