Snow

By Maxence Fermine and Maksans Fermin

Book Overview

Yuko Akita had two passions. Haiku and snow. It is April 1884 and Yuko Akita has reached his seventeenth birthday on the Island of Hokkaid in the North of Japan. The time has come to choose his vocation, warrior or monk, but against the wishes of his father, Yuko settles on a third option: he will be a poet. Yuko begins to write the seventeen-syllable poems we know as haiku--all celebrating the beauty of snow, his one great subject. One day, the Imperial Poet arrives from the Emperor's court. He has heard about the beauty of Yuko's poems and has come to meet the young poet himself. While agreeing the poems have a music all their own, the Imperial Poet notes that lacking color, Yuko's poems are destined to remain invisible to the world. If the young poet is to learn color, he must study with the great artist Soseki in the south of Japan. Yuko sets off on a treacherous journey across the whole of Japan. Cold, hungry, and exhausted, he encounters a vision that will forever change his life. It is a woman, frozen in the ice. With pale gold hair, ice blue eyes and a face as white as snow, the dead beauty will obsess Yuko. Who was she? How did she come to meet her death in the depths of his beloved snow? Arriving at Soseki's door, Yuko is shocked to discover that the great master of color is blind. He will gradullay come to learn that color is not something outside of us, but within us. He will also learn about his master's Samurai past...and Soseki's link to the woman in the snow. It is a beautiful love story which will have its echo in Yuko's own as he finds his own, living, daughter of snow.... With stunning visual images created out of minimalist prose, Snow is as delicate and inspiring as the haiku poetry it celebrates and emulates. A swift and refreshing read, the novel treats readers to a gorgeous love story while gently floating ideas such as what is the nature of art and perception? What is the place of passion in art and in life? Highly romantic and gracefully written, Snow is destined to become a cult classic.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 074346382X
• ISBN13: 9780743463829
• Release Date: April 2011
• Publisher: Atria Books
• Length: 112 Pages
• Weight: 0.24 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.0" x 8.0"
• Age Range: 14 to 18 years
• Grade Range: Grade 9 to Postsecondary

Customer Reviews

The finest book I ever read...

I read this book in french when it first came out and found it to be one of the most charming and delicately written books I know of till today. It is as simple as a haiku but with a touching and romantic story behind it... I loved it and recommend you to read it...it touched my heart.

A Haiku in Itself

Haiku are practically impossible to describe. A haiku has to convey an emotional state both succintly and artfully. SNOW is a novel about the transformation into a haijin, the living of haiku as a way of life and of love. In the beginning, the protagonist has the way of life and the obsession. But he cannot truly master his art without love which brings colour to the whitest of snow. Scientifically, white has all the colours of the visible light spectrum, so on another level, the novel explores the nature of whiteness and of light. SNOW is a guide for readers and writers of haiku in novel (and a novel!) form. Note: haiku no longer are required to have 17 syllables for various reasons available on a plethora of websites.

Snow

I have never read a more beautiful book. I could change not one word.

The beauty of a snowflake

Yuko Akita, seventeen and living in the south of Japan in 1884, is nearing the end of his boyhood. It's time for him to choose a vocation. Warrior or monk. He chooses to be a poet. Says his father, "Poetry is not a profession. It is a way of passing the time. Poems are like water. Like this river," and Yuko says, "That is just what I want to do. To learn to watch the passing of time." Each if Yuko's poems is pure and colorless, each one is about snow. The Emperor's Imperial Poet is not satisfied. They are too white for him. So he sends Yuko to study color with Soseki, a blind old artist who was once in love with a tightrope walker ... named Snow. As the book jacket states, SNOW reads like a long, intensely lucid poem. Not one word is wasted. Although the story itself is not all that remarkable and won't surprise the aware reader, the method used to tell it sets it apart from the ordinary. By the end I had tears in my eyes. There is even a touch of humor here, along with some profound statements about both life and art. Only 100 tiny pages long and readable in half an hour, SNOW is a remarkably beautiful, if simplistic, love story that I can highly recommend.