"The Buddha in the Attic," by Julie Otsuka

Julie Otsuka is the author of two small but extremely powerful novels. I wrote about her first book, “When the Emperor Was Divine,” on 12/22/11; that 2002 book about the U.S. internment of a Japanese-American family bowled me over with its beautiful writing and intensity. Now I have read Otsuka’s second book (nominated for the 2011 National Book Award for Fiction), “The Buddha in the Attic” (Knopf, 2011), about the Japanese “picture brides” who came to the United States and began their new lives with their new husbands, whom they had never met before, in the early part of the twentieth century, and it is even better, even stronger, than the earlier book. The novel is divided into eight parts, including sections about the difficult boat trip to the U.S., about the women's first few days and nights with their new husbands, about the hard and draining work they did farming or working as maids, about their giving birth to and raising children in a new land, and about the time leading up to their internship in the early days of World War II, thus bringing the novel full circle to the setting of Otsuka’s first novel. Throughout, the stories are told through a sort of chorus; the voice is “we,” not “I.” Individual stories are told in a sentence or two each, but as part of the group experience. In other words, the narrative structure is very different from that of most novels. What comes to mind is the word “incantatory,” which captures the chanting lines, the music with its variations, the onward movement of the story. The novel has also been called poetic, and that is accurate as well. The writing captures the feelings of the women, as well as the sweep of history in which their individual lives are caught up. What a heartbreaking but beautiful book this is. "The Buddha in the Attic" is a must-read; highly recommended.