An extraordinary work.......

Wonderful and lyrical. With a canvas as broad as Mishima's hero Thomas Mann and writing as lyrical as Rilke. Very impressive.

Mishima who performed the ritual Seppukku on the afternoon of Nov 25, 1970, sealed and posted to his publisher the manuscript of The Sea of Fertility, a tetralogy of novels over which he had labored for five years. Unfortunately his magnum opus has always been occluded by his suicide. The four books – Spring Snow, Runaway Horses, The Temple of Dawn and The Decay of the Angel – are a saga of 20th-century Japan: a story of national decline that nonetheless proposes redemption through the endurance of a certain soul, forceful enough to be reborn ad-infinitum.

Spring Snow (volume 1 of this tetralogy) is set in 1912 and has shades of Lampedusa's-The Leopard). The main characters of this book are capricious Kiyoaki Matsugae, a baron's son of distant samurai descent, his friend Shigekuni Honda and Kiyoaki's love Satoko Ayakura.

The extraordinary beauty of this book lies in Mishima's intense portrayal of Kiyoaki as a dreamer, gripped by the sense that life's elusive fineness is slipping away by the second and longing to chase the impossible, to "bend the world" into the shape of his ideals. Of course tragedy is not far behind.

The narrator has done his job deftly.
I hope Audible will consider bringing out volumes 2, 3 and 4 of this transcendental work.

14 people found this helpful

Cliche if it wasn’t from the 60s

So it’s cliche, and predictable as can be. The biggest twist was how things happened not that they happened. There’s basically two stories going on, one that’s about a dumb boy falling love with a girl after many many opportunities to say hey like love her before she’s engaged with the prince but does not and so it’s a lot of pinning and destroying his family, her family, and their lives.

Story two is a bunch of philosophy. Ranges from post war politics, Buddhist philosophy, and perception on time. This was the bit I really enjoyed but sadly as the story gets rolling this part takes a big back seat leaving me with a quite boring main story that all I wanted was it to end.

So if you like predictable court dramas set in the Meiji era, check it out. If you like philosophy maybe plan to space out during large chunks of book.

2 people found this helpful

Terrible reader

I've listened to a lot of audiobooks over the years, and I have to say that the guy who reads this one is one of the worst readers I've ever heard. He reads in a total monotone -- like a machine -- with no hint that he understands the words he is reading. I had to stop listening -- not because I didn't like the story, but because I couldn't stand listening to this guy any longer.

2 people found this helpful

really a 3.5

Very dry for, I'd say, about the first 3/4s of the duration. Once it escapes the moody emotional introspection of its very juvenile protagonist, however, it does become very dramatically compelling. I was fully engrossed for the final act. It is a long journey into the mind of an altogether unimpressive person. The redeeming beacon of the story is that the author (I think) is aware of this and driving towards an actual point. The reader is not meant to actually respect the protagonist. At least I hope not. Then again, who knows? The author did essentially do, in his own life, pretty much the same thing that his character does, and for obliquely similar reasons. Maybe he was, at bottom, just as self-absorbed and angst ridden as his character? Tough call.

At any rate, I chose this book because I wanted to explore Japanese literature and, through this lens, Japanese culture. On this front, I was definitely not disappointed. It is a very aesthetically beautiful and culturally rich book. Ultimately, I'm glad I spent the time. I will probably end up finishing the trilogy at some point. I would recommend it.

Characters' angst was too much for me

I didn't "struggle to finish it" because I chose not to finish it at all. I got up to chapter 12. It's beautifully written with exquisite attention to detail and interesting writing. Precisely because it is so well written, the anxiety inherent in most of the characters really grated on me. I just couldn't keep reading about these anxious highly strung people from inside their heads. It is undoubtedly a terrific historical fiction story.Not my cup of tea.

best of the trilogy but a bit overrated

there is a lot of hype that one must deal with when choosing to read Mishima...for a while it was simply trendy to carry around one of his books. Some of his books are so loopy that permission to translate them has never been given even after all these decades...

Mishima was a genius. Really had a head on his shoulders!

I love this narrator with Mishimas work. I have the sound of waves that they did as well. Highly enjoyed both. PLEASE DO MORE MISHIMA!

Overall totally annoying narration

Artificial vigorous emphases and pitch variations just to keep the narration “lively” are way too numerous and very annoying. So is grasping for air.

Terrific!

More of Mishima’s work should be recorded on audio. It rivals Tolstoy, Monet, and Mozart.

Exquisite

I read the plot with my "junk eye", the same eye with with I watch WWE wrestling, and loved the story. The main thing for me though was Mishima's exquisite language paragraph after paragraph that never lost freshness for me. I thought the numerous metaphors (could be similes because I've never been clear about the difference) were stunning and extremely effective in creating pictures in my mind.

I did though, tire of the insufferable parts of main boy's personality and behavior, the shallowness of other characters. In spite of this, Mishima's language was so lyrical that it effortlessly carried me through the entire long story. I really did enjoy this novel. Narrator Brian Nishii was excellent again.

Though some may find this novel dry and slow, many will likely find it fascinating, exhilarating, stunning and wonderful.