Taking place over different periods of time "The Garden of Evening Mists" by Tan Twan Eng deals with quite a few inter-wined historical issues, though the main theme seems to be the role of memory in human existence and the relationship between memory and forgetting.
The book opening quotation by historian Richard Holmes "There is a Goddess of Memory, Mnemosyne but none for forgetting. Yet there should be, as they are twin sisters, twin powers, and walk on either side of us, disputing for sovereignty over us and who we are,all the way until death" sets the tone of this novel.
Though I found it hard to adjust my frame of mind to the slow powerful and reflexive-tinged narrative, I ended up surrendering to its artistry.
I could eventually select and write down several (many) of the book's extracts for future reference and yet I have only copied this one ...
"Are all of us the same, I wonder, navigating our lives by interpreting silences between words spoken, analysing the returning echoes of our memory in order to charter the terrain, in order to make sense of the world around us."
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