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Stone Field, True Arrow: A Novel
In her debut novel for adults, Kyoko Mori has drawn on ancient myths, reworked with her hallmark lyrical prose, to probe the eternal Given the fragility of life, is love too great a risk?
Maya Ishida is no stranger to sorrow. Torn from her artist father and native Japan as a child, raised by her cold, ambitious mother in Minneapolis, she has finally put together a life with few a marriage to a man who never asks questions, a quiet job weaving clothes.
But when her father dies, Maya is pulled back into the memory of their parting. She must question her placid marriage, her decision not to become an artist, and even the precarious peace she made with her mother, before she can be released—to feel passion, risk change, and fall in love.
Maya Ishida is no stranger to sorrow. Torn from her artist father and native Japan as a child, raised by her cold, ambitious mother in Minneapolis, she has finally put together a life with few a marriage to a man who never asks questions, a quiet job weaving clothes.
But when her father dies, Maya is pulled back into the memory of their parting. She must question her placid marriage, her decision not to become an artist, and even the precarious peace she made with her mother, before she can be released—to feel passion, risk change, and fall in love.
288 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
4 people are currently reading
88 people want to read
About the author
Kyoko Mori
23 books52 followersKyoko Mori was born in Kobe, Japan, in 1957. As a young girl, she learned numerous ways to be creative, including drawing, sewing, and writing, from her mother and her mother's family. From those family members, Mori says, "I came to understand the magic of transformation — a limitless possibility of turning nothing into something."
Mori's life changed completely at age 12, when her mother died. Her father remarried one year later, but the household was not a happy one, and Mori looked for ways to stay away from home. Eventually, she moved to the United States to attend college. She then went to graduate school, where she studied creative writing.
Mori's writing grows out of her personal experiences, but she doesn't always write exactly what happens in her own life. "I think that the best thing about being a writer is that we get to make up things and tell the truth at the same time," she says. Since she received her doctoral degree in 1984, Mori has taught creative writing and has published fiction, poetry, and essays.
Mori's life changed completely at age 12, when her mother died. Her father remarried one year later, but the household was not a happy one, and Mori looked for ways to stay away from home. Eventually, she moved to the United States to attend college. She then went to graduate school, where she studied creative writing.
Mori's writing grows out of her personal experiences, but she doesn't always write exactly what happens in her own life. "I think that the best thing about being a writer is that we get to make up things and tell the truth at the same time," she says. Since she received her doctoral degree in 1984, Mori has taught creative writing and has published fiction, poetry, and essays.
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
May 25, 2015
I couldn't understand the characters in this story so I couldn't relate to them. Maya seemed cold and distant with everyone except her best friend, Yuko. It's like Maya only had room in her heart for 1 person.
I couldn't understand why Maya's father, Ishida Mayumi, returned all her letters unopened. He also seemed cold but the stories he told her as a child showed he loved her. He must have been broken-hearted.
Maybe Maya's husband, Jeff, got so lonely living with a distant person that he went back to his crazy first wife. At least there was interaction.
Kay, Maya's mother, is a control freak so I can see why Maya would abandon her in a restaurant.
When Maya sees Eric's studio, she thinks of her father. "She is recalling the black-and-white photograph Mr. Kubo sent her, of her father in the last years of his life. The image fills her mind like a view from the sky. His face could have been a landscape she knew well, desolate but beautiful. If she could have sat by him in the last months of his life, she would have known every inch of his face, every passage of light and shadow across it, and memorized all the details. She would have learned the shades of meaning in his slightest smile or frown; she would have known him in his weakest and strongest moments." Page 163
"Maya's father had named her Mayumi, true arrow, because the name suggested strength and fidelity: a person who can fly like an arrow, straight to the heart of the matter. She has turned out to be more like the single arrow from another proverb: a single arrow is easily broken." Page 208
May lies to Yuko about her affair with Eric and then won't go with Eric when he leaves.
I believe the ending is about Maya sending a letter to Eric so he'll call her and they'll live together. Maya will see Yuko relatively few times a year but their friendship will remain strong.
I couldn't understand why Maya's father, Ishida Mayumi, returned all her letters unopened. He also seemed cold but the stories he told her as a child showed he loved her. He must have been broken-hearted.
Maybe Maya's husband, Jeff, got so lonely living with a distant person that he went back to his crazy first wife. At least there was interaction.
Kay, Maya's mother, is a control freak so I can see why Maya would abandon her in a restaurant.
When Maya sees Eric's studio, she thinks of her father. "She is recalling the black-and-white photograph Mr. Kubo sent her, of her father in the last years of his life. The image fills her mind like a view from the sky. His face could have been a landscape she knew well, desolate but beautiful. If she could have sat by him in the last months of his life, she would have known every inch of his face, every passage of light and shadow across it, and memorized all the details. She would have learned the shades of meaning in his slightest smile or frown; she would have known him in his weakest and strongest moments." Page 163
"Maya's father had named her Mayumi, true arrow, because the name suggested strength and fidelity: a person who can fly like an arrow, straight to the heart of the matter. She has turned out to be more like the single arrow from another proverb: a single arrow is easily broken." Page 208
May lies to Yuko about her affair with Eric and then won't go with Eric when he leaves.
I believe the ending is about Maya sending a letter to Eric so he'll call her and they'll live together. Maya will see Yuko relatively few times a year but their friendship will remain strong.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 30, 2015
Written in 2000. Hayashi means Stand of Trees. When her father dies Maya reflects on his life and comes to understand him. As an artist he taught her as a child that love means making the sacrifice of letting go. He sent back every letter she sent him unopened. He sent back Maya's letters because to read them was to hold on to false hope. Nearly all her father's stories had the same ending: love no matter how deep cannot alter anyone's destiny.
On relationship with mother: Being alone is easier when you know that your mother's love is as unchanging as the pictures she keeps on the walls.
After making love with Eric: When she comes out of this room, her life will never be the same. She will be as alone as she was when she watched the sky tilt blue outside the window of her plane all those years ago. Only this time she won't cry or feel regret.
On girlfriends: That must be how most married women think of their old friends. For them, any friendship with another woman, no matter how close, is only a rehearsal; once they are married, their husbands are the center of their lives, and everyone else is just someone from the past.
Good book for describing what happens to a "safe" marriage when one party wants to begin "living."
On relationship with mother: Being alone is easier when you know that your mother's love is as unchanging as the pictures she keeps on the walls.
After making love with Eric: When she comes out of this room, her life will never be the same. She will be as alone as she was when she watched the sky tilt blue outside the window of her plane all those years ago. Only this time she won't cry or feel regret.
On girlfriends: That must be how most married women think of their old friends. For them, any friendship with another woman, no matter how close, is only a rehearsal; once they are married, their husbands are the center of their lives, and everyone else is just someone from the past.
Good book for describing what happens to a "safe" marriage when one party wants to begin "living."
July 10, 2008
I picked up Kyoko Mori when I was still in junior high, I think, and read Shizuko's Daughter. Looking back, it's a novel that's very much remained with me (I still remember the parts about the pottery and the drawings of the kimonos, and the flowers at the mountain retreat). Years later, I picked up Stone Field, True Arrow at the King's English and bought it.
It's not a perfect novel, but Mori has some sense of truth in all her writing-- reading reviews, some people categorize her as bitter, but she always strikes me as being simply, elegantly truthful. There's some shy beauty, and as with most of her work, an emphasis on the redemptive power of art and creativity. Mori's writing always strikes me as having an underlying layer of pain, and she never allows you to forget the difficulties and sadness people cause for each other. The novel is still semi-autobiographical (Maya's mother is a difficult person, her father is loved but remote and dead, relationships stall, etc.). I was surprised to see that Mori hasn't published more fiction than her three novels. She might have only one story to tell, but she always tells it in a way that makes you forget anything else.
It's not a perfect novel, but Mori has some sense of truth in all her writing-- reading reviews, some people categorize her as bitter, but she always strikes me as being simply, elegantly truthful. There's some shy beauty, and as with most of her work, an emphasis on the redemptive power of art and creativity. Mori's writing always strikes me as having an underlying layer of pain, and she never allows you to forget the difficulties and sadness people cause for each other. The novel is still semi-autobiographical (Maya's mother is a difficult person, her father is loved but remote and dead, relationships stall, etc.). I was surprised to see that Mori hasn't published more fiction than her three novels. She might have only one story to tell, but she always tells it in a way that makes you forget anything else.
January 31, 2008
Picked it up on the free shelf--Chicago-area author, I'm guessing? She had a beautiful style, which kept me going through some depressing subject matter (divorce, dysfunctional families, artistic frustration) and painfully obvious metaphors. I jokingly referred to it as "the sensitive Japanese American woman novel", but still got quite engrossed in it. The protagonist tended to make a lot of choices I wouldn't make, and she seemed a bit crazy, but she had a right to be after all the stuff that happened to her!
August 21, 2011
Stone Field, True Arrow will appeal to anyone who has ever felt like an outsider. Maya has to leave her beloved father in Japan. She begins a new life with her emotionally abusive mother in America. Maya is culturally confused and her life is punctuated by the inability to form close emotional bonds. Maya meets Eric, and falls in love. She is forced to confront the truth about her childhood. She is transformed by the healing power of love. But Maya’s cool detachment remains. Maybe this was meant to be a literary technique to show something. It left me feeling annoyed.
August 26, 2016
Well crafted, but I may be the wrong demographic to really appreciate this novel. I'm significantly older than the main characters. I finished reading because it was artfully and carefully written. I did get tired of the number of characters who could not communicate clearly and honestly with each other, for whatever excellent reasons. The exceptions--those who were honest with each other--kept me going, although the texture and structure of the book were a good deal more complex than the characters, who always seemed to want to be more three-dimensional than they were.
January 26, 2015
The was a very evocative novel. The main character is emotionally stunted due to her absent father and emotionally abusive and narcissistic mother. I thought the author explained how an artist might think and found that very appealing. The relationships, however were very dysfunctional uncommunicative with each other. Yet I wound up caring about the people. I would read another book by this author.
September 9, 2009
Years ago, Kyoko Mori taught at St Norbert's in De Pere and visited my class.
I wanted to love this book, but the dialogue felt stilted, almost as if two characters were doing the talking for everyone with a lot of superfluous additions. The plot, too, felt cobwebby--hard to grasp, strange sequence and jumps.
I wanted to love this book, but the dialogue felt stilted, almost as if two characters were doing the talking for everyone with a lot of superfluous additions. The plot, too, felt cobwebby--hard to grasp, strange sequence and jumps.
October 30, 2009
A quiet novel about a weaver in Minnesota, one of those stories where a woman builds up a safe life for herself and then comes to a crossroads where she has to decide whether to keep on keeping on or change directions, etc etc... I remember enjoying it, though there wasn't quite anything about the story for me to grasp onto and like a lot.
July 31, 2012
Honestly, there was a lot of potential with this book but there was something missing. I didn't like anyone and I wished the entire time that Maya would grow a backbone or at least tell someone off. I don't recommend this one at all.
June 22, 2013
A beautifully written book, very visual, slow and sad. The slow pace is good practice for me as I tend to get impatient sometimes. I wish the characters were more developed and more three dimensional. This is a book to read for the imagery and esthetics, not for the story.
August 7, 2009
Like all other Kyoko Mori books, I loved it!
November 22, 2009
Sad, with great imagery.
July 9, 2010
Quiet, sad, lovely.
July 28, 2011
Very very boring - I need to stop picking books off the shelves at the library when I don't have something on hold...it isn't working for me!
August 10, 2016
It was okay. I guess I'm just not that interested in "women's stories" anymore.
September 3, 2014
Endings are so hard to write. This one doesn't quite not the mark (for me).
August 20, 2017
3rd person narrative...ending was a bit too deep to understand
October 12, 2017
So very meh. The dialogue is stilted, the characters are boring and unrealistic, and it's boring. Also, I don't care for family dramas
August 4, 2023
The writing is pretty on a superficial level, but the story drags on and on and absolutely nothing happens. I can't distinguish one character from another because they're all cardboard-flavored. These are the blandest characters ever written; I read half the book and cannot tell you one distinguishing characteristic about any of them. I have a hunk of paper and no story in it.
May 29, 2023
This story of a woman who feels alone even with others has a melancholy and somber mood. As the story progresses, the prose becomes more poetic. Symbolic art becomes her expression of loss and sorrow.
July 5, 2024
absolutely in love with this author
July 22, 2024
It was really a drag to get through. I found the characters bland and the story boring. I did like the writing at times, but the plot felt aimless and went on for far too long.
April 12, 2010
Didn't get very far before I gave up.
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews