The Garden of Evening Mists - Tan Twan Eng

This novel has provoked the most searching of any discussion our book club has had so far. I feel I didn’t put my own views over terribly well at the time, so I’m making use of this review blog to articulate my perceptions a little better, or so I hope.

There was a lot to love about this book. The writing is mostly vivid with gripping descriptions and a powerful gift of evocation, with just a few lapses into cliché here and there. There’s a wonderful feeling for the Malaysian landscape and culture, and the political turbulence of the era. I really liked the characters, especially Teoh Yun Ling, the heroine / narrator, through whom the story’s outer and inner worlds are brought to us. Her doggedness, individualism and truth to her convictions are highly attractive. As may happen with people who have a strong sense of mission, she is often less than sweet with other people, for example to the municipal gardener she presumes to dictate to early on, or to Frederick, the lover she simply abandons when she meets Aritomo. She clearly has the implacability to be a prosecutor, then High Court judge, of war criminals. I also think Pretorius, the rugged Afrikaner tea planter, father of Frederick, who welcomes her into his family circle, is compellingly drawn.

I’m less convinced by Aritomo and his garden. Aritomo never discusses anything with anyone, he always commands and expects absolute obedience. Although he may have a rich inner world, this has to be deduced from his actions, because he never reveals himself or explains what he is about to anyone. He appears to come from a completely rigid culture which is only interested in total submission to those above you and total authority over those below you. Communion, communication do not exist in his spartan, and for me repellent, world.

The garden he is creating is therefore the manifestation of the imposition of his will on nature. Everything must be exactly as he decides. Unfortunately I am not convinced by his garden. To me there is a constant striving for effect which is about imposing a meaning upon it rather than communing with and expressing its own inner beauty. For example, there is a slightly unsettlingly trimmed lawn when viewed from nearby: but climb a certain hill and look through an old mill placed as a framing device and the lawn turns out to be the yin/yang Tao symbol. This is stagey. It’s not integral to the garden, it’s stuck on. It might as well be the Pepsi-Cola symbol. It’s not a Buddhist garden because it trades in illusion instead of trying to free us from it. Nor is it Tao because it showy effects are not about balance and harmony. Frankly I find it a bit of a sham. This is a pity for the book because of course the garden is where the title and the heart of the story are located. 

Interestingly the author puts a similar view of the garden into the mouth of Teo Yun Ling’s jilted lover who also considers the garden’s effects facile. Is this out of jealousy, or does the author really want to give us a chance to see Aritomo in a different light? H’mm.

Nor am I satisfied with Aritomo’s other demonstrations of his superiority over nature, his various feats of physical strength and training, for example, the ability to shoot a target dead centre while blindfolded. Aritomo can only do this because he is fictional. It is anti-rational to suppose that we can do better at archery without the use of our eyes. As far as I am aware, Japan has never entered a team of blind archers in the Olympics.

Unfortunately my representations to the club about these matters were challenged on the grounds that Aritomo’s feats are matters of spirituality and therefore perfectly to be expected. I was merely showing them how unspiritual I am. Gulp! This was such an unexpected line of argument that I just couldn’t think how to respond at the time. So here I am, sitting regally at my keyboard, dictating what I should have said. 

For me, spirituality is not about doing stunts, being mysterious and ordering lesser people about. Spirituality is about connection with God, forming a relationship with God in which it is God, not we, who takes the lead. Then our relationship with ourselves, others and the world can be reshaped in the light of our most fundamental relationship with God. The mindfulness of God embraces us, others and the world, so when we are connected with God we also reconnect in the fullest possible way with His world, with His people and with our own deepest but broken selves as His children. Unfortunately our connection with God is radically compromised by, in Christian shorthand, sin – fundamentally the orientation that the universe is actually all about me. But God offers healing from this by reorientating us in Jesus Christ. It’s a deeply painful healing requiring nothing less than death and resurrection:  but when we are re-connected with God in Christ we can start to achieve our potential to love and to be loved, and thus reach out to find our place in the universe. 

This is a million miles away from the flashy feats and dictatorial manners of an Aritomo. Yes he disappears up a mountain in the end, just like Moses, or even Jesus at the Ascension, and like them his body is never found. Thus in a work of fiction we can cast a spiritual glamour over the creations of our imagination. But Moses and Jesus worked out their spirituality in the much deeper labour of living with God, others, the world and themselves.

Finally I also took a different view of the conclusion of the story from everyone else, and again I didn’t articulate my thoughts particularly well. I was disappointed that the heroine’s quest to keep her promise to her sister, who was murdered by the Japanese during the occupation in World War 2, is simply abandoned in the end. It was objected that a novel hasn’t had to tie up all its loose ends since the Victorian era: Camus doesn’t resolve anything in L’Etranger. 

For me however this  betrays a failing in the novelist’s art: the artist has created this quest to form the basic emotional motor that propels the entire novel, therefore to just let it go suggests that he didn’t know what to do with his own material. But on reflection even this doesn’t go far enough. I was drawn to Teoh Yun Ling because of her gutsy commitment: she never gives in and takes no prisoners. To just roll over and let it be just isn’t like the person whose story has so powerfully engaged us.

Because in spite of these faults, this is still a powerfully engaging novel. That is why it produced such a stimulating and far reaching discussion. Thank you Tan Twan Eng for a bumpy but beautiful ride!