A Critique of David Guterson’s Snow Falling on Cedars
By: Jessica Hsu
Tags: Books, Writing, Book Review, World War II, Japanese

to anyone who has finished reading this book and would like to scream into the abyss. warning: spoilers ahead

I was quite excited when I first started Snow Falling on Cedars. The premise, which sounded like a blend of historical fiction and murder mystery, seemed interesting. But the book was — unfortunately — quite disappointing.

I went through some of the one or two star reviews on Goodreads because I was curious, and a substantial amount of people rated this book badly simply because they didn’t care that much about reading a long book about racism or history. I disagree. Discussing racism in books is important, and I usually really enjoy historical novels. But I didn’t end up liking this book because of a couple of reasons.

Three primary critiques

1. General plot development:

The plot of this book moves extremely slowly. I disagree with a lot of one star reviewers regarding extra detail and imagery in novels. Beartown, for instance, is such a great example of a well-written book that has many added descriptions but are injected in a way that is engaging and contributes to the primary storyline. When extra information is incorporated well, it truly gives the book a lot of depth. Guterson, on the other hand, seems to have created the exact opposite. The utterly superfluous information detracts away from the main focus of the novel, and I come to find most of these details entirely, and frustratingly, irrelevant.

Furthermore, in regards to plotline development, there was near none. A lot of plot points are unnecesary or missing. Guterson hinting at the tension behind Kabuo and Hatsue’s marriage is confusing because I really didn’t understand what these paragraphs did for the storyline. Perhaps he was trying to imply Hatsue holds regret for marrying Kabuo. But then he never explores this storyline either. So where is he even going with half of these implications?

Additionally, let’s examine the relationship between Hatsue and Ishmael. There ended up being nothing much convincing me about their love. An author needs to have something besides sex to portray a convincing love story, and there are so many other books with authors who are so much better at writing at least a semi-decent romantic subplot (and accomplish this portrayal with even less words). However, if this book wasn’t about romance, I would truly not mind as much. The biggest problem is that half of the book, especially major turning points that hinge on Ishmael and Hatsue’s childhood love for each other, isn’t compelling. There’s little emotional development, even on Ishmael’s end of why he even loves Hatsue.

Finally, Ishmael’s final decision to come to Hatsue with the key evidence to free Kabuo isn’t even explored in depth. This is arguably one of the most important turning points throughout this entire book, but I just felt confused. Why does he ultimately do this? Did he get over Hatsue? (The answer seemed to be a no). Did he just magically do the right thing because he wanted to be fair? (Maybe?) There is no fleshed out character arc for him, even though Guterson seems to have clearly intended to use this trial to show how Ishmael changed in some way through the course of the book. But to me, it’s not apparent he ever did.

2. Portrayal of Japanese people:

disclaimer: While I’m East Asian, I am not Japanese or of Japanese descent, so I cannot speak for whether any of the portrayals here in the book is truly correct/good. These are just some of my thoughts and observations.

I felt like this book engages in a lot of the stereotyping that Guterson is trying to criticize, which is quite ironic, given that this book seems to be intended to criticize the racism surrounding Japanese people in the aftermath of World War II. I do think in general, Eastern and Western culture value personality traits/characteristics quite differently, and I don’t think it’s necessarily bad to depict this. However, I started getting increasingly frustrated when Guterson boils down the only two Japanese people in this book — Hatsue and Kabuo — to characterizations of stoicism/dignity/valuing familial responsibilities again and again. Hatsue goes from being portrayed as rebellious against Japanese culture to utterly “responsible” and realizing her “duty” as a daughter / to marry a Japanese man without much development in between. Kabuo goes to war because he wants to be viewed as loyal to America, with no exploration into his own belief system and opinions. Kabuo talks with Hatsue about the concept of ancestral tradition, thereby seemingly explaining his drive to get back the land Etta had taken from him.

And then that’s it. It just all…felt oversimplistic. Even her mother falls into the typical stereotypical Western view of Asian parents, who are harsh, angry, and unwilling to communicate with her daughter regarding her love for Ishmael. All of these portrayals are made worse by the fact that there is no other Japanese person in the book who is even remotely important (Guterson depicting a group of Japanese people sitting together in the courtroom is the extent to which he discusses any other Japanese person). This means the characterization of Japanese people just comes down to an overgeneralization through two Japanese people.

This book has pushed me to simply believe white authors probably shouldn’t even be writing from the perspective of the Japanese regarding Japanese experience. Either way, Guterson ends up writing only a few chapters from the perspectives of two Japanese people (as compared to perspectives from five or more important side characters who are all white), which is a bit telling of how well this author dives into the issue he’s even trying to target in his book.

3. Characterization of most/all the women:

Every scene in this book with a female character is written in the context of them being characterized as “gently” and “understanding” or fitting into the mode of simply the typical subservient wife to the husband. Susan Marie is characterized through three sex scenes with her husband. Hatsue doesn’t have much character development, and we see through Guterson’s lens how she’s always “patient” and “gentle” and understanding. Etta, who is portrayed as a very racist character and seems unstoppable in the court room condemning the Japanese people, is boiled down to still being subservient to her husband within the home.

This book is the prime example of a male author writing a book with chapters deliberately shown from a woman’s perspectives without actually thinking about the fact that no, women are not thinking about sex and being the perfect wife all the time. I kept trying to give Guterson more chances, but by the end, the writing of this book left a sour taste in my mouth.

It is also quite ridiculous when you consider that even the men in the book are often described in the context of lusting for the women. The paragraph about the defense attorney talking about his lack of a sex life felt entirely unnecessary to me and didn’t add much to the rest of the book. I wanted to learn more about how the defense attorney felt about the trial and his own views on Japanese people, not how he felt when looking at a widow. I wanted to understand every single one of these characters more, but most of their character development ended up being marred by unnecessary descriptions of either sex or their sex lives. The biggest problem is that Guterson doesn’t seem to have written this book with the intent of writing a romance novel, but this book turned into a weird mix of history, murder mystery, and romance that ultimately failed to adequately accomplish its goal in all three categories.

I rambled a bit, but this sums up my thoughts.

In conclusion, for anyone who has read through this review, please save yourself time and do not read this book. Unless, of course, this is assigned reading, in which case please have fun hating on Ishmael.