Type of bind: Audio Cassette
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN num: 9781402523595
Format: Audiobook
ISBN number: 0745127525
Label: Chivers Audio Books
Manufacturer: Chivers Audio Books
Quantity: 10
Printing Date: 1996-04
Publishing house: Chivers Audio Books
Sale Popularity Level: 1988284
Studio: Chivers Audio Books
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Product Description:
When a Japanese-American is charged with the murder of a local fisherman, more than one man's guilt is at stake. Soon to be a major film starring Ethan Hawke, directed by Scott Hicks (Shine). San Piedro Island in Puget Sound is a place so isolated that no one who lives there can afford to make enemies. But in 1954 a local fisherman is found suspiciously drowned, and a Japanese-American named Kabuo Miyamoto is charged with his murder. In the course of the ensuing trial, it becomes clear that what is at stake is more than one man's guilt. For on San Piedro, memory grows as thickly as cedar trees and the fields of ripe strawberries -- memories of a charmed love affair between a white boy and a Japanese girl who grew up to become Kabuo's wife; memories of land desired, paid for, and lost. Above all, San Piedro is haunted by the memory of what happened to its Japanese residents during World War II, when an entire community was sent into exile while its neighbours watched.
Amazon.com Review:
Ishmael Chambers, the one-man staff of the newspaper on San Piedro Island in Puget Sound, is covering the 1954 trial of a high school classmate accused of killing another classmate over a land dispute. Actor Peter Marinker--a stage veteran who has appeared in such movies as The Russia House and The Emerald Forest--takes us deep inside the world created by David Guterson in his award-winning 1994 novel. We learn the sensory details of life in a small fishing community; the emotional lives of people scarred inside and out by World War II; and the deep and unresolved prejudices toward the island's Japanese Americans, who were interned during the war--a tragedy that led to financial advantage for some islanders. Marinker deliberately but nimbly moves from the characters' distinctive voices to the poignant interior perspectives of the soulful, wounded Chambers as he tells a combination love story, murder mystery, and painful history lesson. (Running time: 15 hours, 10 cassettes) --Lou Schuler
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Rated by buyers 
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I would not have purchased this particular edition of Snow Falling on Cedars if I had known it was published for the European market. I gave the book to an American 13 year old who is still learning rules for grammar and punctuation. Although the story is the same, the punctuation reflects the rules of Oxford English therefore, I had to tell her to ignore the punctuation so she would not pick it up and use it in her own American classroom essays. It is a learning experience, of course, but a needless one at this point.
Rated by buyers 
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Don't make the mistake I did and buy this book thinking it's for adults. This is a one hundred page edited version for children still learning how to read books. The real Snow Falling on Cedars is closer to 400 pages. Therefore, though it covers the story, this is not an appropriate book for an adult, and you can't really see the talent of the author.
Rated by buyers 
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It seems that Guterson has several types of readers for this novel. There are those who come to it for the sake of the place. (And what a beautiful place it is.) There are those who come to it for the sake of the period in history. (And what a wrenching, fear-driven time it was....) And there are those, like me, who come for the weaving of the tale. The story is masterfully told, and I absolutely loved rain as a motif in this novel. It's a book that made me question whether I could ever be a novelist; if I can't write as well as Guterson, I don't want to write at all.
Rated by buyers -
For years I almost picked this book up, and finally did this year. I had just completed a dud of a thriller, Joe Hill's Heart-Shaped Box and was looking for something intelligent with a good reputation. I bought Snow and I couldnt put it down. A story so well thought out and developed, I wished I had bought it years before. I'm not big on courtroom novels (which is why I always passed on it), but this novel is so much more than that. In Ishmael, Guterson has wrought one of the most human, heart-aching genuine characters in recent memory. Bravo!
Rated by buyers 
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What I enjoyed most about this novel was Mr. Guterson's facility with descriptive language. I just loved the snow storm--though I also thought he had his characters moving around in it entirely too much--and I liked his casually elegant way of getting into his characters' heads and hearts to explain their histories.
So why only 3 stars? Because I was ultimately unconvinced by the book. By that, I mean that he wasn't as successful as he should have been in intertwining the book's themes of war, family, and racism (especially the latter). By the time the book ended, I didn't much care about the outcome. That's why I wasn't bothered by its truncated, too easy ending. The event that facilitates the ending was extremely contrived, and even drawn out too much.
Mr. Guterson has some serious talent, though. This book just didn't awe me as much as I thought (based on other reviews) that it would.
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