A Single Rose by Barbery Muriel is indeed a poetry in the form of prose from beginning to end. A lovesong to the beauty of Japanese gardens.
Rose has turned 40, but has barely begun to live. When the Japanese father she never knew dies and she finds herself an orphan, she leaves France for Kyoto to hear the reading of his will.
In the days before Haru’s last wishes are revealed, his former assistant, Paul, takes Rose on a tour of the temples, gardens and eating places of this unfamiliar city. Initially a reluctant tourist and awkward guest in her late father’s home, Rose gradually comes to discover Haru’s legacy through the itinerary he set for her, finding gifts greater than she had ever imagined.
This stunning novel from international bestseller Muriel Barbery is a mesmerizing story of second chances, of beauty born out of grief and roses grown from ashes.
The language and the wisdom packed into this novella are extraordinary. There is very little story, but who needs story when what is told is told so well and translated so well? (The original is in French.)
Here are a few samples:
"In return for this indifference to misfortune, they harvest these gardens where the gods come for tea." p. 21
"If a person is not prepared to suffer... they are not prepared to live." p. 21
"...the years were passing, and the icy water of her nightmares, a black water in which she was slowly drowning, gradually came to dominate her days." p. 25
"... he had a slight limp, and it was to this condition that she attributed the way he glided through the world like a fish in a river, creating fluidity from something broken." p. 30
"the world had gone to hide in this patch of sand and circle." p. 38
"... in this world we walk on the roof of hell gazing at flowers." p. 39
"the line that separates water from earth, the line between water and sky: floating lines, sketching a virgin territory with neither wind nor heat, neither ice nor bird-son, an enclave where matter dissolved into the void." p. 49
"... she felt she could lose herself in this vanished way of life." p. 52
"What is it that you like about Japan?... The poetry and the clear-sighted drunkards." p. 59
"Sayoko brought her a transparent umbrella. Rose opened it and liked the way she could see the world through the raindrops....for a moment she dreamed of living inside a full, enclosed raindrop, with no elsewhere and no history, no prospects and no desire." p. 6
"These gardens are melancholy transformed into joy, pain transmuted into pleasure. What you see here is hell turned to beauty." p. 67
"That tea this morning had almost no taste, and yet it tasted of everything... That's a good definition of Japan." pp. 68-69
"that year, one evening in June, Maud went to the river with her pockets full of stones and drowned in magnificent silence, after admiring the trees in the mirror of calm water." p.73
"The world is like a cherry tree one has not looked at for three days..." p. 131
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