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Tarfumes.com - The Commoner: A Novel
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List Price: $24.95
Our Price: $16.47
Your Save: $ 8.48 ( 34% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Nan A. Talese
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780385515719
ISBN: 0385515715
Label: Nan A. Talese
Manufacturer: Nan A. Talese
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 368
Publication Date: 2008-01-22
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Release Date: 2008-01-22
Studio: Nan A. Talese
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Editorial Reviews:
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It is 1959 when Haruko, a young woman of good family, marries the Crown Prince of Japan, the heir to the Chrysanthemum Throne. She is the first non-aristocratic woman to enter the longest-running, almost hermetically sealed, and mysterious monarchy in the world. Met with cruelty and suspicion by the Empress and her minions, Haruko is controlled at every turn. The only interest the court has in her is her ability to produce an heir. After finally giving birth to a son, Haruko suffers a nervous breakdown and loses her voice. However, determined not to be crushed by the imperial bureaucrats, she perseveres. Thirty years later, now Empress herself, she plays a crucial role in persuading another young woman—a rising star in the foreign ministry—to accept the marriage proposal of her son, the Crown Prince. The consequences are tragic and dramatic.
Told in the voice of Haruko, meticulously researched and superbly imagined, The Commoner is the mesmerizing, moving, and surprising story of a brutally rarified and controlled existence at once hidden and exposed, and of a complex relationship between two isolated women who, despite being visible to all, are truly understood only by each other. With the unerring skill of a master storyteller, John Burnham Schwartz has written his finest novel yet.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: A Beautiful Book in Every Way
Comment: I have never read anything by this author before, and when I picked up this book, I was not sure I would like it. After I finished it, I longed for more of the same. The book in written in the first person, by a man, told through the eyes of a young woman....very well done and very clever indeed.
In The COMMONER, we meet Haruko Endo as a young girl, a "commoner" chosen to marry Japan's crown prince after WWII. After she marries the crown prince, she begins living a life of miserable isolation in which not even her children are truly her own. Later, as the story progresses, her daughter marries a commoner, she reenters the world of the commoners as her name is stricken from the imperial registry. We see her son selecting a partner who is, an independent career woman, something Haruko might have been in different circumstances.
Don't miss this lyrical novel. It was such a treat.
Customer Rating:
Summary: ... Just okay!
Comment: My book club read this book and we're all in agreement .... it was just okay. It started out good, and fell flat around the middle of the story. It actually became rather boring .... I would not suggest this reading to other friends ... did not hold my interest at all.
Customer Rating:
Summary: An Ordinary Girl Finds Herself In Extraordinary Circumstances
Comment: In this roman a clef, Schwartz shows the life being drained from a vibrant young woman who falls in love with the crowned prince of Japan. Here, ritual replaces substance and future history governs the present. There is no spontaneity nor room for change. What was done will be done.
If anyone has ever envied the life of royalty, this book will show you the downside of not owning your own life, but rather playing a roll.
Sometimes the writing is repetitive. But overall this is a compelling story.
Customer Rating:
Summary: 1.5 out of 2: Good premise, Poor Execution
Comment: The Commoner tells the story of Haruku, the daughter of a Japanese business man who catches the eye of the Crown Prince of Japan. Basically, this is a Japanese Cinderella story with a more equivocal ending. Despite the timelessness of the story and the evocative setting of the Imperial Palace, The Commoner is unsuccessful on many levels. Schwartz's attempt to do too much in too few pages is the most glaring problem. The narrative covers Haruku's life before the Imperial Palace, the Crown Prince's courtship, her integration into the Imperial Palace, the birth of the next generation, and the next generation's repetition of Haruku's choice to give up the life of a commoner for the life of a royal. Schwartz raises interesting themes and introduces some promising characters and relationships along the way, but he doesn't have time to examine anything in depth. Superficiality of plot development and characterization is the unhappy result.
Additionally, Schwartz's prose is sometimes so ridiculous that I almost gave up reading at several points along the way. I cannot explain what I mean except with a few examples:
"The air-raid siren was so loud it obliterated the self; it sent us running from where we stood with such terror that our pasts were momentarily left behind."
"A light but stirring breeze entered the house through the open windows and breathed innocent secrets onto the legs of every woman in the room." (I promise I am not making these up.)
"The tremor had been in my imagination, that deep underground cavern where hope and feeling need not live in fear of each other."
"[L]ife is not an echo, endlessly returning the past to us so that we might read and reread in its fading variations the meanings we cannot keep ourselves from wanting." (Huh?)
These sentences do not make any more sense in context than they make in this review. If you enjoy well-crafted prose that actually means something, The Commoner is likely to annoy you.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Commoner is Common
Comment: This book could have been...
so much more interesting. What a fascinating story idea for most of America who knows nothing of the intricacies of Japanese life and customs.
Instead we get: the prince of Japan marries a strong willed commoner who plays a mean game of tennis. A gal like that, you expect would be able to withstand the shrill little lady in waiting. But no, right from the start Haruko, the feisty commoner now princess, cowers and capitulates with annoying frequency. The prince is a simp who never speaks up for his wife. The characters had no character.
And that is how it goes from start to finish. The little flourish at the end about the next generation's princess is too little too late.
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