The Dream of Water: A Memoir

This is a book I relish so much, I limit myself to a chapter a day just to stretch out the enjoyment and savor each sentence. I am an American who has lived in Japan for seven years, and it is so interesting to see the view through her eyes -- she really does capture aspects of Japanese culture that are below the surface, not normally visible, but nonetheless palpable. This girl definitely has a way with words!

I greatly enjoyed the book "Yarn-Remembering the Way Home" but all the books that Kyoko has written are the same thing-whether fiction or nonfiction. They're about her mother's suicide, how Koyko felt, moving to the U.S., etc. Reading about it once was enjoyable. Reading the same story in all of her books is very redundant. Kyoko obviously has many emotional issues concerning her childhood.

The prevailing message of Kyoko Mori's work is "going home is never easy." She never actually says it outright, however, instead opting to weave her life in America with her abused childhood and the people she encounters on her eight week trip to Japan.The story did not strike me as being "whiny" in any way, shape, or form. "Whiny" is a term better left for books that I have read that involve people complaining about their comfortable lives of little or no strife with their surroundings. Ms. Mori had valid points to discuss, even if they were depressing.A deeper message lies in the book -- you cannot change people. A perfect example is Hiroshi Mori, her father. Even as an old, sickly man, he has had no remorse or second - thoughts about the pain he has put his only daughter through, instead remaining a selfish, self centered old man.Her writing style is rich and filled with long, poetic sentences, and I wish she was *my* creative writing teacher. She fails to be self-pitying and offers her humility to the reader by gently feeding it to them, not pounding out paragraph after paragraph of remorse and sorrow. I enjoyed her anecdotes about her childhood and her (limited) memories of her family, and this book is just as good, if not better, than the other works she has written. It's so nice to have read such a consistently well versed author.

In this intensely personal memoir Kyoko Mori visits her home town of Kobe, Japan, in an attempt to come to terms with her mother's suicide and her estrangement from her father.She came to America at 20, seven years after her mother's suicide, and even then knew she would never return for more than a visit. Her memoir begins with an account of the immediate aftermath of her mother's death - the shrouded atmosphere of shock and grief, her maternal grandparents gentle consideration, her father's jarring insensitivity.It then jumps to 1990, as Mori, now an American, readies for departure from Green Bay, Wisconsin, where she teaches creative writing at the university. She has always been ambivalent about the country of her birth. When people ask her if she 'goes back,' she winces at their terminology and replies, ' 'I'd like to visit sometime, but there are other places I'd rather travel to if I had the money.' 'The trip is a sabbatical, justified as research for her stories and poems. She will spend four weeks sightseeing. Letters to her family are only sent from the airport: 'I could never get on the plane this morning if I had to see my family first thing upon arrival.' The people she has arranged to meet on arrival are, instead, Americans living in Japan and it is an American family she stays with.Mori skims over her four weeks traveling. She remains an outsider, treated as a foreigner. The Japanese she meets don't even expect her to speak Japanese. The reader pictures her in her American running shoes and sports clothes, a contrast to the Japanese women in dresses and lipstick, aloof in her tourist personna. But Mori begins to think she would feel alien anyway, even if she had not become so determinedly American. Kobe, where she grew up, is a modern, westernized city with little of Japanese tradition about it. The private school she went to, run by westerners, encouraged her non-conformist creativity. Even Japanese art does not move her.Upon her return to Kobe she agonizes over calling her father. She longs to see her other relatives - the maternal grandmother, aunts and cousins her father had forbidden contact with at the age of 13. Her paternal aunt and cousin who gave her so much sympathy and love in the difficult years after her father remarried. But she is Japanese enough to know that she must call her father first otherwise the others will feel awkward.The narrative is haunted by the guilt and grief she still feels over her mother's suicide, the bitterness she carries for her father. Until we meet him, it's easy to feel impatient with Mori as well as sympathetic. Sure, he was a cold, even viscious parent - depriving her of family, threatening to take her out of the school she loved, beating her for speaking her mind, full of psychological cruelties - but she also provoked him with her rash impetuosity. Perhaps Mori should be an adult about it and reconcile. How can he hurt her now?Then we meet her father and his callous behavior is as breathtaking as it is sad. The stepmother really is like something out of Grimm's fairytales. In their presence Mori becomes like a child again but the years have taught her restraint. Reuniting with her other relatives, she finds it frustrating that Japanese language and custom makes emotional expression difficult. But in the end she also finds a delicacy, even a liberation, in this. Breathing room.Mori's language is simple, unadorned, affectingly graceful. Her narrative engages the emotions as it struggles with big questions of coming of age and coming to terms with anguish that will never be resolved. In the end she remains an alien in her birthplace and the reader understands a little more about what that means.

I don't like giving a synopsis or summary of the book. Thats what reading it is for. What I do like to discuss in reviews is what kind of effect the book had on me. The mood and atmosphere of the book was on the depressing side, but that's okay. Because life is like that sometimes. Like Kyoko Mori, if you don't confront a problem correctly, it will fester in your soul until you come to terms with it. The book was realistic. I like putting down a book and knowing it isn't "too good to be true" because it is true, and I don't end up in a fantasy land.The book does deal with alot Kyoko's negative experiences and views of the Japanese culture. I love Japanese culture, and I think her views are totally valid. I can accept the good and bad. Why be closed minded? Kyoko even comes to appreciate and understand some of the seemingly "rude" behaviors of her Japanese friends, and can enlighten us outsiders to what might seem to be odd behavior.Good book. It was nice for Kyoko to let go of some of her personal demons and share this very personal and painful story. Maybe we can all be as brave as her and launch head on into what we've been dreading and fearing.