The Snow Fox

With most used books I acquire on a whim, my attention to them at the time is so fleeting I barely remember picking them up, or even where I got them. This one I remember it distinctly. I was at the nicer thrift store in town and took this one off the shelf in curiosity. The title had caught my eye, the back cover copy made it sound interesting. I stood so long thumbing through pages reading a passage here and there, an employee approached me and made some comment about if I wanted to read it I should buy, this isn’t a library. My reply: “I need to see if this is a book I’ll actually want to read.” But really I was a tad embarrassed to be seen holding a book with a naked woman on the cover, and didn’t want to take it home and feel more awkward at my kids seeing me with it. The employee’s response was another remark that made it obvious he thought if you’re a reader, any book off the shelf will do. That comment rankled but I had no ready response although now I can think of quite a few. If you are a foodie, will any cuisine do? are you just as happy to eat fast food hamburgers and fries sitting on plastic chairs, as four artfully plated courses in an upscale restaurant off a linen tablecloth? If you like sports, does it matter what’s at play on the field? surely you have more interest in soccer or golf or marathon races- they’re so different. Books are so very personable, just because I like to read doesn’t mean I’ll like any book you put in my hands.

Rant over.

But I almost didn’t read it, for all that. Proof again that sometimes the moment and mindset has to be right, to appreciate a work. I tried this one once and didn’t get far. My eyes just slid over the words without much sinking in, I found it dull and couldn’t find any connection to the characters and even went online to read a bunch of one and two-star reviews to see if others felt the same. I almost ditched it but held on for another attempt later. (Now I find those one-star reviews hilarious. One reader said this book nearly gave her a “pseudo-intellectual concussion” ha ha)

This time I sank into the story without much effort. It’s set in fuedal Japan. It’s a meandering, contemplative yet sparsely-told story about a beautiful woman loved by two men, a noble lord and his closest trusted samurai. Half of the story is about the lives of women in the palace- secluded, pampered, and constantly vying with each other, petty cruelties that sometimes turn deadly. Further on the novel suddenly switches narrators, relating rumors and fables that you’re not sure at first have anything to do with this story, then turning to the samurai’s viewpoint. So there are councils of war, strategy planning, battles, villages of poor peasants burned to the ground with no remorse. Men wondering if anyone will recall their exploits when they are long gone, knowing their deeds become legends barely resembling the truth after just a few re-tellings. In the end, this beautiful woman has taken herself to live in seclusion up in the mountains, embittered by what she’s done in the past. The samurai finally encounters her again after what seems like a lifetime of campaigning (and a very long period spent just wandering around in the vast untamed forests with his horse and a fox he tames, when he gets tired of being a soldier). What happens next is idyllic and peaceful- for a while. But it doesn’t end happily.

I just don’t know how to tell about this book. It’s so strange and dreamy and upsetting at the same time. The people speak to each other obliquely and frequently quote poetry. They are enthralled by the beauties of nature- having special rooms just to view the moon at certain phases, going on excursions to see the first snowfall over a lake at night, or to look at fallen autumn leaves on a river (not to mention the spring glory of fruit tree blossoms). And on the other hand, they cause terribly brutal things to happen all the time. There’s the ravages of disease and other misfortunes- one long segment of the book is about a plague that strikes in summer, with dead bodies being thrown over the walls and corpses stacked up. Unsettling. The characters for all their high education and artistic poise, are full of superstition and totally inept at dealing with illness or complications of childbirth. It doesn’t take much to bring them down. On page 258, the wandering samurai wonders at a snowfall and thinks of how everyone back in the palace would scramble about figuring out what omen it meant and then he is struck with a realization:

: the world had nothing to do with humans or even with animals. The world and the weather turned on their own wheels and what happened, happened. Nature was as irrational and precipitous and impossible to predict as any one man. 

The feel of this story is very like Pearl S. Buck’s The Good Earth to me- in the sweeping breadth of its narrative and precise understatement. It also reminds me strongly of The Worm Ouroboros, one which I probably did not appreciate enough at the time. It feels very foreign in many ways, so I didn’t at all mind the mundane details about how people lived. At the same time it is deeply familiar, with all the concerns and dreams of humanity. One I’ll definitely have to revisit again, there’s a lot I didn’t quite follow and it feels like the kind of book that deserves a re-read.