The Samurai's Garden by Gail Tsukiyama

Stephen is a young Chinese man suffering from tuberculosis in 1937. When his father sends him to the family’s summer home in Japan, he becomes involved in the lives of the older residents: Matsu, the property’s caretaker and gardener, Sachi, an old friend of Matsu’s who is a leper who lives in the mountains nearby, and Kenzo, who was Matsu’s friend and Sachi’s fiancée in their youth.

For most of the book, which spans thirteen months, the escalating problems between Japan and China area distant threat, made present mostly through Stephen’s letters from his family in China. The focus, instead, is on Stephen’s quiet life in Japan and the history of, and relationship between, Matsu, Sachi, and Kenzo, and how they influence Stephen’s life. There’s also a minor subplot involving Stephen falling in love with a local girl, but while well done, it isn’t as interesting as the older people and their relationships with Stephen and each other.

It’s a very quiet book but, after a somewhat slow beginning, a rather engaging one, and it manages to be convincingly tragic without making everyone dead, eternally miserable, or alone forever.

manga: Hellsing Vol 8-9

I sincerely hope that the normal reaction to large chunks of this part is “I have no idea what is going on, but it is awesome and so I do not care!” I’d hate to be alone in that.

( spoilers )

And now to wait for Dark Horse to get around to publishing the final volume.