Product Description

In this dazzling and critically acclaimed debut collection, Mary Yukari Waters provides a rare glimpse into the heart and humanity of a society in the midst of immense change. These graceful, expertly crafted stories, set in Japan, explore the gray areas between the long shadow of World War II and the rapid advance of Westernization. The women and children who inhabit this terrain have lost husbands and fathers to the war, and ancient traditions to American pop culture. Parents are mystified by the future of forks and knives, hairspray and hip-hop; children embrace it.

With these stories of upheaval and renewal, estrangement and reconciliation, Waters provides keen insight into the experience and sensibility of different generations as they confront an altered world. A virtuoso collection infused with warmth, The Laws of Evening announces a stunning new voice in fiction.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #496265 in Books
• Published on: 2004-05-18
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

Review
Geoffrey WolffAuthor of The Age of ConsentThese stories introduce a writer of authority and delicacy. Mary Yukari Waters approaches her characters' symptoms and distresses with the compassionate curiosity of a brilliant physician. She treats these human beings -- however exotic, to this Western male, may be their customs and circumstances -- with scrupulous dignity. Her characters do better for having come under her gaze. I feel better, more alert to strangers and surprise, for having read them.

Review
Chicago TribuneAn impressive collection from a young writer exploring subjects of immense intrinsic value...assured and complex.

Vogue[A]n elegant debut....With unnerving subtlety [Waters] navigates the ways people in exile find comfort in the everyday traditions they cannot bear to leave behind.

ElleResonant and deeply felt...each story has the multi-faceted clarity of a rare gem.

Los Angeles TimesMuted and delicate, Waters' stories ache with loss.

San Francisco ChronicleAs meticulous as origami....Waters...lets nothing get past her in this splendid book.

About the Author
Mary Yukari Waters is half Japanese and half Irish-American. The recipient of an O. Henry award, a Pushcart Prize, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, she has been published in The Best American Short Stories 2002 and 2003. She earned her MFA from the University of California, Irvine, and lives in Los Angeles.

Customer Reviews

The Rules of Love
"When you come first in someone's heart...when you feel the magnitude of another person's love for you...you become a different person. I mean something physically changes inside of you...I want you to have that feeling, because it will sustain you, all your life. Life...life can get so hard."
The sentiments above as spoken by a Mother to her daughter in the penultimate story, `The Way Love Works' in Mary Yukari Waters's "The Laws of Evening," pretty much sums up this short story collection as a whole.
Yukari has chosen to focus on the years in Japan surrounding the Second World War in this collection of stories and specifically, for the most part on the Japanese women's view of things.
Each story is well crafted, many are precious, snapshot views of the War and all have to do with relationships. Much of the writing is quite beautiful and a much of it is extremely revealing and psychologically true, as in this description of a son's relationship with his father: "Outsiders would not understand their exchange. They would not see that his father, far from begging for sympathy, would have considered it out of place. The truth was that there was an understanding; they had no need for embarrassing displays. Saburo thought of the railroad they were drafting at work, its parallel rails never touching, yet exquisitely synchronized, committed in their separateness as they curved though hill and valley. That he was comfortable with. That, he could do."
Mary Yukari Waters is a fresh, gentle voice whose writing, on the other hand, reveals a dagger like precision especially when applied to the mysteries and intricacies of Mother/Daughter and Father/Son relationships. I look forward to Yakari-Waters mixing it up a bit in her next book: maybe a novel about the Japanese Youth Culture or one about the Japanese American situation in America during WWII?

Startlingly memorable
The Laws of Evening is a memorable collection of poignant and moving stories. Set in Japan, they provide a compelling perspective on the experiences of different generations during World War II and its aftermath. Viewed through the eyes of grandparents, parents and children, the author explores themes of loss and separation, not only between generations, but also between those who fared differently in the war.

Out of a typically edgy landscape, rife with divisions and disconnections, both big and small, the author conjures recurring instances of the painful, hesitant acknowledgment of a changed reality ("The Laws of Evening are not the Laws of Afternoon"). From this acceptance ensues a transformation of the present and a renewed, broader connection to life.

My personal favorites in the collection are Seed, Shibusa and Rationing, each of which is associated with astonishing images of pain and growth that have a heart-breaking intensity to them.

The writing is careful, poised and conveys with precision the nuances of feeling of the protagonists. The author skillfully creates a backdrop to the stories that is cool and restrained (sometimes to the point of eerieness) prior to the reader being swept into the visceral resonance of experience that is profound and deeply moving. This, in my opinion, is writing at its best.

Short Stories as Engaging as Novels
Other reviewers understandably and accurately comment on the way the author informs the reader on cultural and historical issues, but I believe this most remarkable masterpiece works because of the depth of its sensitivity to private human experience and its rare literary style. Not a word should be added, not a word removed.
Most of the stories speak of women who have confronted loss, but this is in no way a "woman's book." I have purchased a half dozen copies to share with friends here and overseas, and several of those have subsequently purchased more copies to send to their friends. All have loved it, both men and women. My only complaint about the work is that it ended too soon.
(While I myself generally prefer novels, in contrast to another reviewer I am not certain this author should be encouraged to write novels: she has developed too well the capacity to carve small fine gems.)
You will be glad to have read this rarely engaging and uncommonly touching short book.