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Dreaming Water: A Novel
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| List Price: | $13.95 |
| Price: | $9.99 |
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Product Description
Hana is suffering from Werner's syndrome, a disease that makes a person age at twice the rate of a healthy individual: at thirty-eight Hana has the appearance of an eighty-year-old. Cate, her mother, is caring for her while struggling with her grief at losing her husband, Max, and with the knowledge that Hana's disease is getting worse by the day.
Hana and Cate's days are quiet and ordered. Cate escapes to her beloved garden and Hana reads and writes letters. Each find themselves drawn into their pasts, remembering the joyous and challenging events that have shaped them: spending the day at Max's favorite beach, overcoming their neighbors' prejudices that Max is Japanese-American and Cate is Italian-American, and coping with the heartbreak of discovering Hana's disease.
One of the great joys of Hana's life has been her relationship with her beautiful, successful best friend Laura. Laura has moved to New York from their hometown in California and has two daughters, Josephine and Camille. She has not been home in years and begs Hana to let her bring her daughters to meet her, feeling that Josephine, in particular, needs to have Hana in her life. Despite Hana's latest refusal, Laura decides to come anyway. When Laura's loud, energetic, and troubled world collides with Hana and Cate's daily routine, the story really begins.
Dreaming Water is about a mother's courage, a daughter's strength, and a friend's love. It is about the importance of human dignity and the importance of all the small moments that create a life worth living.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #20889 in eBooks
- Published on: 2003-05-01
- Released on: 2003-05-01
- Format: Kindle Book
- Number of items: 1
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Tsukiyama (The Language of Threads) has a style at once evocative and formal, well suited to historical romances; now she takes on contemporary drama. At 38, Hana Murayama is dying of Werner's syndrome, a genetic defect that causes premature aging. Hana is almost totally dependent on her mother, Cate, who at 62 is still recovering from the sudden death of her husband, Max. As a child during WWII, Max had been interned with other Japanese-Americans in a camp in Wyoming and subsequently went on to teach history at a small northern California college. That background, her mother's love of gardening and her own usually feisty outlook are what Hana brings to her effort to live and die with dignity. Over the course of two days, Hana and Cate retrace in memory their lives and Max's. Their scattered and sometimes conflicting expectations are brought into sharp focus when Hana's best friend, Laura, now a successful East Coast lawyer, arrives with her two daughters, Hana's godchildren, allowing Hana and Cate to find a measure of the reconciliation that has eluded them. Tsukiyama has a wonderful ability to elicit delicate atmospherics; in particular, she uses the sense of touch to stunning effect. But the pacing is stilted, and neither Cate nor Hana allows herself a moment of private rage, although, in her thoughts, Cate strays briefly from the stoic. Her implicit frustration adds a note of vulnerability to the moving, subtle narrative.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Tsukiyama's fifth novel details a short span in the life of Cate and Hana, a mother and daughter coping with the onslaught of Werner's Syndrome. This syndrome, which ages a person abnormally, makes Hana look and feel 80 rather than 38. Yet she yearns for all the good things that life will never bring her, and Cate, recovering from the sudden death of her husband, cares lovingly for Hana. When Hana's best friend, Laura, arrives with her teenaged daughters to visit, Hana has a chance to reconnect with this troubled woman after a long absence. Laura and her children are able to help Hana and Cate face the future's uncertainties, while at the same time Hana and Cate discover that they are able to help Laura's girls grow up in numerous unseen ways. Tsukiyama (Women of the Silk) writes beautifully about courage and love, showing us the importance of daily kindnesses and highlighting the beauty found in the relationships among mothers, daughters, and friends. Highly recommended. Ellen R. Cohen, Rockville, MD
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
At 62, Cate is caring for her seriously ill daughter, Hana, and grieving for her beloved husband, Max. Hana is suffering from Werner's Syndrome, a disease that has caused her body to age at twice the normal rate. Not yet 40, Hana is as frail as an 80-year-old woman. As Cate struggles to come to grips with her daughter's decline, she remembers happier days, when she met her husband, Max, a Japanese American who struggled with his memories of being interned during World War II. She also remembers when Hana was a child, with an overabundance of energy until the signs of Werner's surfaced in her twelfth year. Amid all this heartbreak, Tsukiyama finds hope. Hana, despite the devastations of Werner's, clings to life and lives for each day. When her childhood best friend, Laura, along with her two daughters, comes to visit Hana and Cate, Hana has mixed feelings about her arrival. But an unexpected connection with Laura's eldest daughter Josephine and the memories of her youth that Laura's presence brings back prove invaluable to Hana. Tragedies abound in the novel--Max's death, Hana's illness, Laura's loss of both parents--and yet they do not overwhelm it. Beautifully written, effused with both sadness and hope, Tsukiyama's novel cannot fail to move readers. Kristine Huntley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Customer Reviews
The Nature of Loss
This is the first book I've read by this author and it was passed to me by a friend who had enjoyed it. I think it is one of the finest stories I've read on the nature of loss in all its forms and how it is experienced by everyone that is touched by loss. Max lost his freedom; Cate lost her dream of a perfect life; Hana lost her dream of a future; Laura lost her dream of a marriage; Josephine lost her dream of a family that was whole. I particularly enjoyed the transitions in the book - how a situation in the present linked to a memory of the past.
She did it again!
What a wonderful story! I have read most of Gail Tsukiyama's books and this is second to the Samurai Garden.
Great concept, poor follow-through
The idea and concept of a young woman dying of old-age disease could be an intersting story. However, there was a lack of depthness to this novel. Ms. Tsukiyama writes each chapter assuming a different character, however, I had to keep going back to the chapter title to see who was speaking because there was no way to distinguish one character from another - they all spoke in very similar styles and language (almost as if she took on ALL of the characters herself - a one-woman show!), sometimes overly poetic or heavy on the metaphores and similes, that it took away from the story. Towards the end, it did get more touching and I must admit, I did get a tightness in my throat, but the ending left a lot unsaid, unsettled and could have had more meat to it.
I love her other book Women of the Silk, and was hoping for more.
