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Dreaming Water By Gail Tsukiyama ( St. Martin's Griffin )
Release Date: 2003-05-01
Average Customer Rating:
List Price: $13.95
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Product Description
Bestselling author Gail Tsukiyama is known for her poignant, subtle insights into the most complicated of relationships. Dreaming Water is an exploration of two of the richest and most layered human connections that exist: mother and daughter and lifelong friends.
Hana is suffering from Werner's syndrome, a disease that makes a person age at twice the rate of a healthy individual: at thirty-eight Hana has the appearance of an eighty-year-old. Cate, her mother, is caring for her while struggling with her grief at losing her husband, Max, and with the knowledge that Hana's disease is getting worse by the day.
Hana and Cate's days are quiet and ordered. Cate escapes to her beloved garden and Hana reads and writes letters. Each find themselves drawn into their pasts, remembering the joyous and challenging events that have shaped them: spending the day at Max's favorite beach, overcoming their neighbors' prejudices that Max is Japanese-American and Cate is Italian-American, and coping with the heartbreak of discovering Hana's disease.
One of the great joys of Hana's life has been her relationship with her beautiful, successful best friend Laura. Laura has moved to New York from their hometown in California and has two daughters, Josephine and Camille. She has not been home in years and begs Hana to let her bring her daughters to meet her, feeling that Josephine, in particular, needs to have Hana in her life. Despite Hana's latest refusal, Laura decides to come anyway. When Laura's loud, energetic, and troubled world collides with Hana and Cate's daily routine, the story really begins.
Dreaming Water is about a mother's courage, a daughter's strength, and a friend's love. It is about the importance of human dignity and the importance of all the small moments that create a life worth living.
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 The Nature of Loss
This is the first book I've read by this author and it was passed to me by a friend who had enjoyed it. I think it is one of the finest stories I've read on the nature of loss in all its forms and how it is experienced by everyone that is touched by loss. Max lost his freedom; Cate lost her dream of a perfect life; Hana lost her dream of a future; Laura lost her dream of a marriage; Josephine lost her dream of a family that was whole. I particularly enjoyed the transitions in the book - how a situation in the present linked to a memory of the past.
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She did it again! ( st3psp8 )
What a wonderful story! I have read most of Gail Tsukiyama's books and this is second to the Samurai Garden.
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 Great concept, poor follow-through
The idea and concept of a young woman dying of old-age disease could be an intersting story. However, there was a lack of depthness to this novel. Ms. Tsukiyama writes each chapter assuming a different character, however, I had to keep going back to the chapter title to see who was speaking because there was no way to distinguish one character from another - they all spoke in very similar styles and language (almost as if she took on ALL of the characters herself - a one-woman show!), sometimes overly poetic or heavy on the metaphores and similes, that it took away from the story. Towards the end, it did get more touching and I must admit, I did get a tightness in my throat, but the ending left a lot unsaid, unsettled and could have had more meat to it.
I love her other book Women of the Silk, and was hoping for more.
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A Warm Fantasy
The subject made me leery of reading this book, and I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the writing and by its readability. Totally unexpected were the many insights into WWII and the Japanese internment, and how the victims and their children were affected by it. I found that aspect of the book enlightening and realistic. However, the story works in part because of the picture-perfect relationships between Max and Cate, a loving husband and wife, between Cate and Hana, a loving and caring and understanding mother and her child, between Hana and Laura, a lifelong and utterly honest friendship without conflict or jealousy, between Max's parents and himself and his child -- everyone is so GOOD, so LOVING, so UNDERSTANDING. That makes this a warm and satisfying story, and, believe me, the quiet resolution at the end of the book IS enjoyable and satisfying. However, I prefer stories that recognize that few people have such perfect relationships with their parents or their children, few people ever experience a true, lifelong, soul-mate friendship. I prefer stories that show us how real people deal with realistic relationships in our real world. It would have been more satisfying if there had been a little more conflict and a little more coping before reaching the same warm and uplifting ending.
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 Dreaming Water ( hiphoptortoise )
Gail's writing is again wonderful in this in book, but I found the book disappointing due to a lack of closure. I felt the book led you up to a particular point in the life of the character's and then left you wondering in the end what the message was meant to be. I almost felt as if the writer wasn't brave enough enough to tell you the ending to a tragic, yet hopeful story. I can only compare this book to the Samurai's Garden since I haven't read a third book by this author yet, and I loved the Samari's Garden! So I was surprised that this book lacked closure at the end. I am not sorry that I read this book due to the fact that I enjoy the author's style of writing.
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