Reviewed by Marcella
TITLE: When We Were Flowers
AUTHOR: Catori Sarmiento
PUBLISHER: The Wild Rose Press, Inc.
LENGTH: 256 pages
RELEASE DATE: February 8, 2023
BLURB:
In 2011, Tara Larson was told that her English teaching contract would not be renewed. Taking a chance, she packed herself up and moved from her small-town Minot, North Dakota, to be an Assistant Language Teacher in Tokyo, Japan for a year.
Having barely traveled outside her home state, Tara navigates her way through the Land of the Rising Sun and by chance meets Ami Kishiguchi. The two immediately share an inexorable bond.
However, disaster strikes. First the Tohoku earthquake and nuclear disaster. Then the floods back home in Minot. And most jarringly, Tara must come to terms with the death of one of her students.
Filled with doubts and anxiety, Tara must decide if she will continue the adventure in Japan—and her relationship with Ami—or leave for the safety and comfort of home.
REVIEW:
Let me start with the cover of the book. It looks quite childlike, and this is also how the book is written. The book has quite a few spelling and grammar mistakes in them, such as ‘funnym’, or even the name of the deceased student spelt incorrectly once. This has been something that bothered me throughout the book, as these mistakes made the sentences difficult to understand.
The book has quite a slow start, which is understandable given the fact that the Main Character, Tara, whose first-person POV we follow, is new to Japan. She is slowly discovering how Japan works and how different it is from what she is used to, back in America. However, the slowness remained throughout the rest of the book as well. On top of that, she also put the focus on completely unrelated things in the story, which made me wonder why those bits were even there in the first place. It made no sense and it was distracting. Comparable to this, the author also repeated sentences, explanations or whole paragraphs from time to time, either on the same page or a few pages apart. This made it seem like the author forgot that this was already in the book.
Then there is the presence of all the Japanese in the book. I knew when I started the book that it was about Japan. However, I did not expect there to be so much Japanese in the book. I would not have had a problem with it if the author consequently gave the translation of what she put in there. This, the author did not. Almost the entire book had me wondering what the Japanese meant that was there. Of course, I know basic phrases such as ‘yes’, ‘thank you’, and such, but these phrases went way beyond that, without any explanation. This really took away from my reading experience as I either did not understand a part of the book or had to stop reading to look up the meanings.
Then, last but not least, the writing style of the author. She showed why other authors always say ‘show, don’t tell’. Almost everything in the book is written as statements, so thoroughly worked out that the reader has no possibility of letting their imagination run free with it. When reading a book, you always form your own image, interpreting it in a certain way. The author wrote everything so stiffly that as a reader you do not have the chance to do so. This made quite a few interactions in the book seem forced and unnatural, making me cringe while reading it.
Overall, I came across too many irritation factors from grammar and spelling mistakes to the constant lack of understanding the Japanese, that I did not enjoy reading this book. This is a shame as the subject of moving to an entirely new country across the world could have been such an interesting topic.
RATING:
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