What do you think?
Rate this book
Ash Garden
1st Bloomsbury 2002 paperback vg++ In stock shipped from our UK warehouse
304 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2001
26 people are currently reading
607 people want to read
About the author
Dennis Bock
7 books133 followersDennis Bock is a Canadian novelist and short story writer. His newest novel, STRANGERS AT THE RED DOOR, was published in September, 2025 and named a Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year. The National Post ranked it in their top five novels of the fall publishing season.
"The Giller-shortlisted novelist uses the fantastic to tell a thrilling tale of censorship and the artist’s need to tell their story." — The Globe and Mail
“Eerily delightful. . . . Strange, affirming and lovely.... otherworldly beauty..." — Winnipeg Free Press
The Good German was published in September 2020 and praised by Margaret Atwood as "a cunning, twisted, compelling tale of deeply unexpected consequences."
Hailed by The Globe and Mail as “Canada's next great novelist,” Dennis has published four other books, including Olympia, The Ash Garden, The Communist's Daughter, and Going Home Again, shortlisted for the 2013 Scotiabank Giller Prize and winner of the 2014 Best Foreign Novel Award in China. His books have also been shortlisted for the Amazon/Books in Canada First Novel Award, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Prize, the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize (Regional Best Book), and the City of Toronto Book Award. His collection of stories, Olympia, won the Danuta Gleed Literary Award, the Canadian Authors’ Association Jubilee Award, and the Betty Trask Award in the UK. The Ash Garden won the 2002 Canada-Japan Literary Award. His books have been published in translation in nine languages in twenty-three territories.
Dennis grew up in Oakville, Ontario and completed a degree in English literature and philosophy at the University of Western Ontario. He teaches at the University of Toronto and the Humber School for Writers.
"The Giller-shortlisted novelist uses the fantastic to tell a thrilling tale of censorship and the artist’s need to tell their story." — The Globe and Mail
“Eerily delightful. . . . Strange, affirming and lovely.... otherworldly beauty..." — Winnipeg Free Press
The Good German was published in September 2020 and praised by Margaret Atwood as "a cunning, twisted, compelling tale of deeply unexpected consequences."
Hailed by The Globe and Mail as “Canada's next great novelist,” Dennis has published four other books, including Olympia, The Ash Garden, The Communist's Daughter, and Going Home Again, shortlisted for the 2013 Scotiabank Giller Prize and winner of the 2014 Best Foreign Novel Award in China. His books have also been shortlisted for the Amazon/Books in Canada First Novel Award, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Prize, the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize (Regional Best Book), and the City of Toronto Book Award. His collection of stories, Olympia, won the Danuta Gleed Literary Award, the Canadian Authors’ Association Jubilee Award, and the Betty Trask Award in the UK. The Ash Garden won the 2002 Canada-Japan Literary Award. His books have been published in translation in nine languages in twenty-three territories.
Dennis grew up in Oakville, Ontario and completed a degree in English literature and philosophy at the University of Western Ontario. He teaches at the University of Toronto and the Humber School for Writers.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 103 reviews
August 7, 2018
There were moments of extraordinary language in this book. Individual scenes were written with powerful sentences that took me to times and places...and yet, I had trouble connecting with the story and characters. I never felt like this book evolved beyond mere moments. I felt like I was trapped watching scenes from home movies that seemed disjointed. For this reason, it took me a while to finish this book. But again, the strong language kept drawing me back in.
October 17, 2013
Sometimes, chance encounters with books lead to discoveries you wouldn't want to miss. Finding "The Ash Garden" has been one such experience. It is a superbly written, subtle, yet complex human interest story placed against the backdrop of historical events. Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, the atom bomb's devastating short term impacts reverberate through the story. The lingering long term effects, politically and emotionally, connect the three protagonists: the German scientist, having left Europe to participate in the bomb's development, the documentary film journalist who survived the attack as a child, seriously scarred, and the scientist's wife, a refugee from the Nazi regime. Bock succeeds in creating a deeply moving portrait of the three people whose lives are dramatically connected through these events. They also draw them to each other, almost despite themselves.
Each section is written in the distinct voice of one of the protagonists, thereby allowing each to express his or her perspective on the events over a period of fifty years. The narrative moves between present and past, each episode providing another building block for us to understand their lives' complexities. We are exposed to their emotional conflicts and follow the often detached scrutiny of their respective behaviours and attitudes. Their recollections of the historical events naturally differ, so do their assessments of their human emotions, whether love, betrayal, guilt, shame, selfishness or atonement. Yet, the story builds gently and none of what is shared overwhelms the reader. Bock writes with great empathy for the characters, exploring their personalities without passing judgement on their action or inaction at the different stages of their lives.
Bock has described his interest in writing fiction as "raising big questions" of human society. Major topics that escape clear black and white answers. For example, the scientist joined the Los Alamos team because building the atom bomb " was the only way to end the war". Yet, during his research mission to Hiroshima to "scientifically assess the bomb's impact", he is exposed to the human suffering of innocent civilians. In "The Ash Garden", Bock proves himself a master in exploring the grey zones between right and wrong, innocence and responsibility. The narrative moves towards the anticipated and necessary confrontation between the victim and the scientist, in her view co-responsible for her suffering. The outcome is everything but clear-cut or obvious, but consistent within the story and the intentions of the author. A deeply moving and beautiful book with important messages for us all.
Each section is written in the distinct voice of one of the protagonists, thereby allowing each to express his or her perspective on the events over a period of fifty years. The narrative moves between present and past, each episode providing another building block for us to understand their lives' complexities. We are exposed to their emotional conflicts and follow the often detached scrutiny of their respective behaviours and attitudes. Their recollections of the historical events naturally differ, so do their assessments of their human emotions, whether love, betrayal, guilt, shame, selfishness or atonement. Yet, the story builds gently and none of what is shared overwhelms the reader. Bock writes with great empathy for the characters, exploring their personalities without passing judgement on their action or inaction at the different stages of their lives.
Bock has described his interest in writing fiction as "raising big questions" of human society. Major topics that escape clear black and white answers. For example, the scientist joined the Los Alamos team because building the atom bomb " was the only way to end the war". Yet, during his research mission to Hiroshima to "scientifically assess the bomb's impact", he is exposed to the human suffering of innocent civilians. In "The Ash Garden", Bock proves himself a master in exploring the grey zones between right and wrong, innocence and responsibility. The narrative moves towards the anticipated and necessary confrontation between the victim and the scientist, in her view co-responsible for her suffering. The outcome is everything but clear-cut or obvious, but consistent within the story and the intentions of the author. A deeply moving and beautiful book with important messages for us all.
November 4, 2013
Let it be said right now: Dennis Bock's The Ash Garden is a very beautiful book. It is lyrical and has a very powerful poetic quality. As a matter of fact, the book reads like one long sad poem about loss and despair. This is the type of book that takes it time to tell its story. It is quiet and serene.
The books concentrates on two major characters. You have Anton, a German scientist who escaped his native land in the 40s and moved to America where he helped build the atomic bomb that would later destroy Hiroshima. Then you have Ekimo, a Japanese woman who's face was burnt by the bomb and who has lived in misery ever since. Both their lives are entwined in more ways than one as the book tries to show how much the war affected their existence. They are both still haunted by the horrors of that day.
The characters are highly believable and very well drawn out. The only problem is that the book sometimes tries to dig too deep into their lives. A lot of unnecessary back story is given in order to make these character seem more real. There is one long section where Anton looks at young kids playing in the snow which is very beautiful but which seems totally out of place in this book. It's as though Bock is trying too hard to give his characters a realistic back story.
The story is very similar to the styles of Michael Ondaatje or Alice Munro. But Bock still has to find the amazing power these two authors are able to convey through their prose. The Ash Garden is a good first novel, just not a perfect one.
The books concentrates on two major characters. You have Anton, a German scientist who escaped his native land in the 40s and moved to America where he helped build the atomic bomb that would later destroy Hiroshima. Then you have Ekimo, a Japanese woman who's face was burnt by the bomb and who has lived in misery ever since. Both their lives are entwined in more ways than one as the book tries to show how much the war affected their existence. They are both still haunted by the horrors of that day.
The characters are highly believable and very well drawn out. The only problem is that the book sometimes tries to dig too deep into their lives. A lot of unnecessary back story is given in order to make these character seem more real. There is one long section where Anton looks at young kids playing in the snow which is very beautiful but which seems totally out of place in this book. It's as though Bock is trying too hard to give his characters a realistic back story.
The story is very similar to the styles of Michael Ondaatje or Alice Munro. But Bock still has to find the amazing power these two authors are able to convey through their prose. The Ash Garden is a good first novel, just not a perfect one.
December 5, 2011
If I could give this book zero stars, I would. I absolutely hated it. This book was so confusing and slow at the same time - even finishing three pages felt like a victory. Because it jumped around so much, I never really understood the chronological order of the events, because times and dates were never really specified. I also strongly disliked two of the three main characters because their relationship bothered me, they just did not seem to mesh well together. I felt like this book was supposed to have some sort of deeper level that I missed, because clearly people and critics love it, judging by the stellar reviews and the award nominations but I just do not see it.
March 22, 2023
This is the second novel I read by this author and my appreciation for his insight and compassion given to the personal effects of war on a deeply poignant level will compell me to read more of his work.
Unlike many mainstream/popularized WWII related fiction novels, Bock doesn't use subdued memories of his characters to tell stories of the past, but he places the reader into the minds of his subjects, ankers them to real events/key moments to develop/expand them subtly in their present in a non-linear way. In this case, the narrative follows the Hiroshima bombing, where we learn of victim Emiko and the German nuclear physicist Anton Böll involved in the development of the bomb, and the irreparable relationship to his wife, the Austrian-Jewish refugee Sophie Böll.
Beck's tactical measure to let the trifecta of the storylines build till they converge towards the end, gives effective value to all sides while keeping their integrity.
Plenty of food for thought to stunn the senses.
Unlike many mainstream/popularized WWII related fiction novels, Bock doesn't use subdued memories of his characters to tell stories of the past, but he places the reader into the minds of his subjects, ankers them to real events/key moments to develop/expand them subtly in their present in a non-linear way. In this case, the narrative follows the Hiroshima bombing, where we learn of victim Emiko and the German nuclear physicist Anton Böll involved in the development of the bomb, and the irreparable relationship to his wife, the Austrian-Jewish refugee Sophie Böll.
Beck's tactical measure to let the trifecta of the storylines build till they converge towards the end, gives effective value to all sides while keeping their integrity.
Plenty of food for thought to stunn the senses.
August 3, 2010
What would be the most extreme, life changing experience you could have? Losing half your face to disfigurement from the atomic bomb surely ranks at the top of the list. In The Ash Garden, Dennis Bock explores this predicament from the perspective of a Japanese woman named Emiko. An innocent child when defaced during the war, she is now a celebrated filmmaker who looks back on her life using her scars as a kind of lens for trauma and memory.... My full review can be read at: www.the-reading-list.com
March 13, 2017
Read just as was pub'd in '03. Still remember it as a favorite and would reread in a heartbeat.
January 12, 2016
3 ½-stars... for now.
i finished this book last night and have spent all day today trying to figure out what to say about it. bock's writing is so lovely - it's truly elegant and beautiful. and he handles some heavy issues of morality very well, reflecting the complicated nature of being human in an often inhumane world. given the chaos and life-changing nature of the events bock takes on, the restraint is impressive. bock is quite subtle in his examinations, and he levels no judgments or opinions in presenting his characters and their actions.
in the back of the edition of my book is a wonderful interview with bock. in it, he is asked about the appeal of moral complexity as a writer. his response:
but there is something that is tripping me up, something that felt a bit flat which i can't quite put my finger on.
the novel started out very strongly for me and i was completely captivated by emiko's story line. anton böll was an equally interesting character -- a scientist who escaped germany in order to secure better work in his field, ending up an integral player on the manhattan project. sophie is the third character - a hungarian-german escapee. the story of these three non-combatants moves from character to character, back and forth in time, from the day the bomb was dropped on hiroshima, to a time nearly 50 years later. all three lives are connected and fundamentally changed by war, and by each other.
there is also the aspect of illness handled in the novel. i will hide this bit because the nature of the illness, though presented early on, is a bit of a slow reveal. so i can't quite decide if i am being too picky over a fictionalization, or if it's reasonable to want more clarity/accuracy where this plot point is concerned?
overall the ash garden is a moving and sensitive portrayal of three lives forever changed by one catastrophic day. i feel as though aspects of the novel are going to sit with me for a good long time, carrying more weight than my quibbles. my rating may go up.
i finished this book last night and have spent all day today trying to figure out what to say about it. bock's writing is so lovely - it's truly elegant and beautiful. and he handles some heavy issues of morality very well, reflecting the complicated nature of being human in an often inhumane world. given the chaos and life-changing nature of the events bock takes on, the restraint is impressive. bock is quite subtle in his examinations, and he levels no judgments or opinions in presenting his characters and their actions.
in the back of the edition of my book is a wonderful interview with bock. in it, he is asked about the appeal of moral complexity as a writer. his response:
" As a reader I've always been drawn to "Big Question" books that might introduce certain questions to the reader's mind but do not claim to provide answers to those questions. I love a good mystery, but not in the conventional sense of that word: the mystery of right behaviour, moral choice, responsible action. I'm put off by novels that pretend to answer the questions they raise. There can't be answers - not sincere or meaningful answers - to the questions of moral action raised in a great book. A serious writer, in my mind, attempts to expose the flip side to any commonly held belief. It's a shell game of sorts, with each shell containing, or seemingly so, the seed of truth. Point to it with anything resembling conviction or certainty and you will be proven wrong. That being said, a novel isn't a game. It doesn't try to cause the reader to stumble, but in resisting an easy answer regarding a character's choices the reader might find himself in the confusing position of simultaneously loving and hating a character, his choices, his beliefs. For me a novel is at its best when it brings contradiction to the surface of a character's life and when those contradictions and confusions are highlighted by virtue of a dramatic conflict between characters. In exposing those contradictions by the right positioning of character, setting and drama, you approach the heart of what it is to be human. There is, in this world, instead of the simple black and white universe of poorly imagined fiction, and infinite variety of greys."i loved this! and i do feel bock succeeds really well in writing about the moral complexity of both anton böll and emiko. and sophie too.
but there is something that is tripping me up, something that felt a bit flat which i can't quite put my finger on.
the novel started out very strongly for me and i was completely captivated by emiko's story line. anton böll was an equally interesting character -- a scientist who escaped germany in order to secure better work in his field, ending up an integral player on the manhattan project. sophie is the third character - a hungarian-german escapee. the story of these three non-combatants moves from character to character, back and forth in time, from the day the bomb was dropped on hiroshima, to a time nearly 50 years later. all three lives are connected and fundamentally changed by war, and by each other.
there is also the aspect of illness handled in the novel. i will hide this bit because the nature of the illness, though presented early on, is a bit of a slow reveal. so i can't quite decide if i am being too picky over a fictionalization, or if it's reasonable to want more clarity/accuracy where this plot point is concerned?
overall the ash garden is a moving and sensitive portrayal of three lives forever changed by one catastrophic day. i feel as though aspects of the novel are going to sit with me for a good long time, carrying more weight than my quibbles. my rating may go up.
May 17, 2008
This is one of those books in which three individual narratives become one. One of those individuals helped to engineer the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima, and he doesn't regret having done so. Another one of those individuals is a child who suffered severe burns from the bomb. And the last is a young Jewish refugee, sent out of Europe by her family before the war erupted. Only one of these characters transcends his or her solipsism, which makes the self-absorbed interactions of the other two feel ragged and obnoxious by comparison.
The scenes between Anton and Sophie became my favorite in this quiet book. Their relationship leaves you with the sense of something warm, but vague. The admixture threatens to leave one lukewarm, but Sophie's quiet understanding of her husband, her passion for gardening, and the brave way in which she meets her end draws one in.
The tie that binds is eventually revealed, and it's an awkward ploy. The book is saved only by Bock's masterful scenes in a Canadian lake town, amid children sledding in the dark and shrubberies pruned into animal shapes.
The scenes between Anton and Sophie became my favorite in this quiet book. Their relationship leaves you with the sense of something warm, but vague. The admixture threatens to leave one lukewarm, but Sophie's quiet understanding of her husband, her passion for gardening, and the brave way in which she meets her end draws one in.
The tie that binds is eventually revealed, and it's an awkward ploy. The book is saved only by Bock's masterful scenes in a Canadian lake town, amid children sledding in the dark and shrubberies pruned into animal shapes.
March 27, 2014
Often enough we are confronted with historical facts and are asked to explain our role in them. "Where were you when . . " or "What did your family do during . . " is an often enough phrase during either classroom lectures or dinner parties. But the answers are not that simple for many of us. We didn't know that action 'x' was going to cause 'y' or family member believing something way back when would be socially unacceptable for us today. That is the conflict Dennis Bock tries to show in his novel "The Ash Garden"
Link to my complete review
Link to my complete review
August 15, 2023
Yet another historical fiction based on perils faced by mankind out of war and mutual hatred. This storyline revolves around Anton, one of the scientists involved in Nuclear Bomb creation that led to havoc in Japan, Sophie, his half jewish wife and Emiko, one of the child survivors of the catastrophe.
It's only Emiko's timeline that kept me flipping the pages. Very confusing overall plot lines that almost take you nowhere. Sophie and Anton's entire arc seems bland and unrelated till the very end. Could've been two separate novels on two separate themes instead.
Emiko's part was the best thing about this book, but that too lacked empathy at times.
Not exactly a page turner but writing style is pretty decent, if only it had more substance to other plotlines as well, could've easily been a great read.
It's only Emiko's timeline that kept me flipping the pages. Very confusing overall plot lines that almost take you nowhere. Sophie and Anton's entire arc seems bland and unrelated till the very end. Could've been two separate novels on two separate themes instead.
Emiko's part was the best thing about this book, but that too lacked empathy at times.
Not exactly a page turner but writing style is pretty decent, if only it had more substance to other plotlines as well, could've easily been a great read.
April 5, 2018
I didn't think I'd enjoy The Ash Garden by Canadian author, Dennis Bock. The subject was definitely depressing and it took me a bit to get into the flow of the story, which jumped from the past to the present and back again. But as I settled to it, it quickly drew me in.
The main theme of the story is the bombing of Hiroshima during WWII with the first atom bomb. The story revolves around 3 people; Emiko, a Japanese girl who was a child in Hiroshima when the bomb explodes and has her life turned on its end; Anton Boll, a German scientist who had escaped from Germany and was involved in the bomb construction; Sophie, Anton's wife, an Austrian woman, half - Jewish, whose parents sent her from her home to America to escape the terrors of the Nazi regime towards their community.
Emiko is disfigured by the bomb and her family destroyed and she is part of a group of girls who are sent to America for plastic surgery. Anton goes to Hiroshima immediately after the bomb to work for the Manhattan project in seeing the effects of the bombing and radiation. Sophie, who has her own physical limitations, tries to resolve her life with Anton and her desire to find out what happened to her parents.
It's a much deeper story than this premise and the journeys each person travels during the course of the story is fascinating. Their links to each other become apparent as the story progresses and there are a few surprises as well. It is a depressing story but still excellent and worth reading. (4 stars)
The main theme of the story is the bombing of Hiroshima during WWII with the first atom bomb. The story revolves around 3 people; Emiko, a Japanese girl who was a child in Hiroshima when the bomb explodes and has her life turned on its end; Anton Boll, a German scientist who had escaped from Germany and was involved in the bomb construction; Sophie, Anton's wife, an Austrian woman, half - Jewish, whose parents sent her from her home to America to escape the terrors of the Nazi regime towards their community.
Emiko is disfigured by the bomb and her family destroyed and she is part of a group of girls who are sent to America for plastic surgery. Anton goes to Hiroshima immediately after the bomb to work for the Manhattan project in seeing the effects of the bombing and radiation. Sophie, who has her own physical limitations, tries to resolve her life with Anton and her desire to find out what happened to her parents.
It's a much deeper story than this premise and the journeys each person travels during the course of the story is fascinating. Their links to each other become apparent as the story progresses and there are a few surprises as well. It is a depressing story but still excellent and worth reading. (4 stars)
November 23, 2009
Each August I feel compelled to read or re-read a book about Hiroshima. Often it was John Hersey’s book and the past few years it has been Hiroshima Doctor, written by a Japanese survivor and facilitated in publication by a UNC faculty member who headed the medical investigations in Hiroshima after WW II. This year I happened to pick up The Ash Garden by Dennis Bock and although fiction it had promise. There are three characters: Emiko who at age six was badly burned and disfigured by the Hiroshima bomb and who lost her brother, mother and father in the attack; at age 16 Emiko is brought to the United States for surgery to reconstruct her face that was severely damaged; as an adult she becomes a documentary film maker, driven to discover the emotional scars people from the US and Japan suffer from the bombing of Hiroshima. Anton Boll, a German physicist who worked on the atomic bomb in Nazi Germany before defecting and coming to the United States where he worked on the Manhattan Project; Anton spent time in Hiroshima immediately after the war and became fixated on the justification of dropping the bomb. Sophie, an Austrian Jew from a refugee camp in Canada, who lost her entire past in the war; Sophie suffers from lupus and her skin is slowly becoming scar tissue; she marries Anton in order to escape from the refugee camp. The characters suggest a wonderful story. It isn’t.
March 6, 2011
The 'Ash Garden' refers to the somehow miraculous growth of flowers that started to grow just weeks later in the ashes of what was left of Hiroshima and its people. Dennis Bock has written about the most disturbing event to happen in our world, the bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. The atom bomb was used as a means to end world slaughter at the time. The book retraces the lives of three people whose lives were changed as a result. We go on a journey with Emiko Amai, a little girl, who while playing on a riverbank one morning, had her face burned away. She is trying to discover the men behind the bomb, one of them being Anton Boll, and his reason. Anton was one of the last intellectuals to escape Germany during the war and join the Manhatten project in the U.S. He meets his wife Sophie, whose story is also told, and we are led on this emotional roller coaster as all of us try to make sense of this along with the characters. One of the most disturbing revelations to me was that they actually had debated whether to drop the bomb on a city or a military target, or over some barren area. Emiko says at one point about Anton, "I wondered if I shouldn't walk down and ... confess that I could never understand what he'd done, and therefore not free him from the impossible burden of explanation." This sums up how I feel about this incident. The ending leaves one feeling greatly impacted by this emotional story which should be made compulsory reading in schools.
October 23, 2022
It's entirely possible that I completely missed all sorts of meaning that was intended to be woven into this novel - the writing style certainly implies (to me) that there is something there to be pondered, studied, parsed from the narrative. Yet despite the author's beautiful way of painting a scene or developing a character, to me this story felt like a lot of poetic words taking me nowhere. I pushed through because I wanted to finish the book, and by the end I could perhaps see how someone could derive more meaning from the intertwined stories of these two characters on opposite ends of a terrible moment in history. But I could not bring myself to look past the endless descriptions of pointless minutiae to many of the deeper points I assume were infused into this novel.
In the end I would summarize by saying that though I appreciated the beauty of the writing style, the book as a whole was not for me.
In the end I would summarize by saying that though I appreciated the beauty of the writing style, the book as a whole was not for me.
May 16, 2018
Excellent. I highly recommend this book. A must read for everyone who enjoys historical literature.
August 7, 2025
A tale of reconciliation, or an attempt at it, after the most heinous crime against humanity – the explosion of the first atomic bomb over Hiroshima.
Told from the viewpoints of three people – Anton, the German émigré and nuclear scientist involved in the Manhattan Project; his wife, Sophie, an Austrian Jew who left her family behind to flee aboard the ill-fated St. Louis on its Voyage of the Damned; Emiko, the Japanese girl, who at 6 years of age was at Ground Zero and suffered the loss of her family and the disfigurement of her face and limbs – we get to understand the conditions, the justification, and the fallout of this horrific event.
Anton is convinced the bomb was necessary to end the war, despite the collateral damage it caused to Japanese civilians – but is he? As old age looms, he seems to be trying to make reparations and move from a pro-bomb to an anti-nuke stance. Sophie is haunted by the family and life she left behind, and by the realization that she will never truly understand her husband, the man who got her out of a refugee camp in Quebec after her peripatetic sea voyage ended. And Emiko, after years of reconstruction surgery and being made a lab rat by those trying to understand the effects of radiation, has finally transcended her loss to become an advocate for nuclear disarmament and a producer of documentary films. She accosts Anton at a conference in 1995 and gets him to agree to an interview for her forthcoming documentary. He seems to be fatefully awaiting this meeting.
The narrative switches back and forth in time between 1945 – 95, and back and forth in the POV of the three principal characters, and I found this constant switching distracting. Once, when Anton was meeting Sophie for the first time in a refugee camp in Quebec City, we were suddenly yanked to another scene of him crossing the border as a refugee himself from France into Spain – I’m not sure such rapid crisscrossing was warranted. There are also boring swaths of the domestic life of Anton and Sophie, the stuff that we all engage in, which I questioned whether warranted for today’s attention span-deficient fiction reader. But this is Can-Lit: plodding, brooding, melancholy.
On the flip side, there are searing scenes and imagery that are well drawn: Emiko and her brother holding the only working hands they have to exchange stories and provide life to each other by touch; Emiko distinguishing the smell of healthy skin of the nurses in her ward from the charred kind of the patients; doctors pulling out a zipper embedded in a bomb victim’s pubis; the bombers letting go their deathly cargo; Sophie finally letting go to her lifelong illness.
The three characters’ lives are solitary, following the blast that changed them forever. They exist mostly in their heads, shunning the world, even though Anton seeks out and supports young people, and Sophie tends to her garden. In death, few will gather at their funeral. The interview between Emiko and Anton is the finale of this novel. Instead of throwing in spoilers, let’s just say that there can be no resolution to this level of personal and societal damage, although there are many revelations, leaving expiation for Anton and consternation, even anger, for Emiko.
The image of Emiko in Sophie’s clothes, stepping into the lake up to her waist, waiting for Anton, suggests many possibilities. Different conclusions could be drawn from this scene, but let’s leave it to each reader to figure it out. I liked the one I came away with.
Told from the viewpoints of three people – Anton, the German émigré and nuclear scientist involved in the Manhattan Project; his wife, Sophie, an Austrian Jew who left her family behind to flee aboard the ill-fated St. Louis on its Voyage of the Damned; Emiko, the Japanese girl, who at 6 years of age was at Ground Zero and suffered the loss of her family and the disfigurement of her face and limbs – we get to understand the conditions, the justification, and the fallout of this horrific event.
Anton is convinced the bomb was necessary to end the war, despite the collateral damage it caused to Japanese civilians – but is he? As old age looms, he seems to be trying to make reparations and move from a pro-bomb to an anti-nuke stance. Sophie is haunted by the family and life she left behind, and by the realization that she will never truly understand her husband, the man who got her out of a refugee camp in Quebec after her peripatetic sea voyage ended. And Emiko, after years of reconstruction surgery and being made a lab rat by those trying to understand the effects of radiation, has finally transcended her loss to become an advocate for nuclear disarmament and a producer of documentary films. She accosts Anton at a conference in 1995 and gets him to agree to an interview for her forthcoming documentary. He seems to be fatefully awaiting this meeting.
The narrative switches back and forth in time between 1945 – 95, and back and forth in the POV of the three principal characters, and I found this constant switching distracting. Once, when Anton was meeting Sophie for the first time in a refugee camp in Quebec City, we were suddenly yanked to another scene of him crossing the border as a refugee himself from France into Spain – I’m not sure such rapid crisscrossing was warranted. There are also boring swaths of the domestic life of Anton and Sophie, the stuff that we all engage in, which I questioned whether warranted for today’s attention span-deficient fiction reader. But this is Can-Lit: plodding, brooding, melancholy.
On the flip side, there are searing scenes and imagery that are well drawn: Emiko and her brother holding the only working hands they have to exchange stories and provide life to each other by touch; Emiko distinguishing the smell of healthy skin of the nurses in her ward from the charred kind of the patients; doctors pulling out a zipper embedded in a bomb victim’s pubis; the bombers letting go their deathly cargo; Sophie finally letting go to her lifelong illness.
The three characters’ lives are solitary, following the blast that changed them forever. They exist mostly in their heads, shunning the world, even though Anton seeks out and supports young people, and Sophie tends to her garden. In death, few will gather at their funeral. The interview between Emiko and Anton is the finale of this novel. Instead of throwing in spoilers, let’s just say that there can be no resolution to this level of personal and societal damage, although there are many revelations, leaving expiation for Anton and consternation, even anger, for Emiko.
The image of Emiko in Sophie’s clothes, stepping into the lake up to her waist, waiting for Anton, suggests many possibilities. Different conclusions could be drawn from this scene, but let’s leave it to each reader to figure it out. I liked the one I came away with.
January 12, 2024
Emiko ist sechs Jahre als, als die Atembombe über Hiroshima gezündet wird und ihr Leben für immer verändert. Auch das Leben von Anton verändert sich. Der junge Wissenschaftler arbeitet beim Manhattan Projekt. Für ihn und seine Frau Sophie ist es ein so tiefer Einschnitt in das gemeinsame Leben, dass er nie mehr ganz heilen kann.
Emiko und Anton treffen sich viele Jahre nach dem 6. August 1945 wieder. Im Verlauf der Geschichte stellt sich heraus, dass es nicht das erste Wiedersehen ist, auch wenn Emiko sich nicht daran erinnern kann. Der Einfluss, den Anton auf ihr Leben genommen hat, lässt sie vieles plötzlich in einem anderen Licht sehen.
Ich kann Antons Motiv nur bedingt nachvollziehen. Anfangs war es sicherlich der Wunsch, dem verstümmelten Mädchen zu helfen. Aber später? Das kann er auch im Gespräch mit Emiko nicht erklären.
Ohnehin ist sich Anton über viele seiner Handlungen nicht sicher. Oft habe ich den Eindruck, dass er sich zu Dingen hintreiben lässt, als sie selbst anzugehen. Er kann Menschen und ihre Gefühle nur schwer einschätzen, genauso wie die Konsequenzen seiner Handlungen. Dabei glaubt er aber immer, das Richtige getan zu haben und kann nicht verstehen, wenn das Andere nicht so sehen.
Es hat viel an Anton gelegen, dass mir The ash garden nicht wirklich gut gefallen hat. Der schwerfällige Stil hat sein Übriges getan.
Emiko und Anton treffen sich viele Jahre nach dem 6. August 1945 wieder. Im Verlauf der Geschichte stellt sich heraus, dass es nicht das erste Wiedersehen ist, auch wenn Emiko sich nicht daran erinnern kann. Der Einfluss, den Anton auf ihr Leben genommen hat, lässt sie vieles plötzlich in einem anderen Licht sehen.
Ich kann Antons Motiv nur bedingt nachvollziehen. Anfangs war es sicherlich der Wunsch, dem verstümmelten Mädchen zu helfen. Aber später? Das kann er auch im Gespräch mit Emiko nicht erklären.
Ohnehin ist sich Anton über viele seiner Handlungen nicht sicher. Oft habe ich den Eindruck, dass er sich zu Dingen hintreiben lässt, als sie selbst anzugehen. Er kann Menschen und ihre Gefühle nur schwer einschätzen, genauso wie die Konsequenzen seiner Handlungen. Dabei glaubt er aber immer, das Richtige getan zu haben und kann nicht verstehen, wenn das Andere nicht so sehen.
Es hat viel an Anton gelegen, dass mir The ash garden nicht wirklich gut gefallen hat. Der schwerfällige Stil hat sein Übriges getan.
October 23, 2020
This was the ignorance he was talking about, and the first attempt tp organize the scientific community, to oppose the idea that the bomb was easily managed, a picturesque desert pastime, the defining measure of the free world’s domain and divine right... Journeys
You will never know your life as well as you remember it. The remembering is easy. In recalling your past there is precious little knowledge, which remains our most difficult quarry. In memory there are simply shapes that appear before the eyes of who you are now, and who you might’ve been, the shapes as incomplete and changeable as the times. But they are all we have. I would truly never know who I’d been before being brought here. Sure, certain memories of myself would remain; but they suggested another person’s life to me now, not my own. Yet somehow I was not saddened by this thought. Now that the girl I’d been was released from me, I felt unburdened by her pains and solitude, and by my need to remain that girl. At once the stern and brutalized face with which I’d confronted the world was no longer capable of representing me. I was someone else now. My history was no longer my own. Emiko
April 7, 2020
This enigmatic novel focuses on three individuals and their connection to the bombing of Hiroshima. One, a Japanese female, was burned by the blast, but survived and underwent surgery to reconstruct her face and back. One was a German scientist who was part of the Manhattan Project that developed the bomb. The third was his wife, a half-Jewish refugee from Austria, who approached the scientist as a way of escaping the internment camp she was in. Anton "rescued" his wife, and he believes he rescued the Japanese girl by putting her on the list for experimental surgery in the U.S. An attempt at redemption? What is fact, and what is illusion? The three live lonely lives, haunted by painful pasts. I cannot claim to understand the book, but it invoked moments of great beauty and yearning as well as moments of great pain and loss.
July 20, 2021
Stumbling across this novel on a whim, I didn't really think much of it at first; Yet as I read the first few, I couldn't help but be curious as to how the story would play out between a German atomic bomb scientist and a hiroshima bomb survivor but alas.
As a teen who doesn't really read much about WW2, this is a good novel to start off if you want to experience WW2's ambience. The insomnia that comes after the tragedy, how relationships were affected because of the Nazis and Los Alamos. It was almost tragic to think even, that worse things happened in real life and that the novel is just a pathway mirror for it, that experiencing it for yourself is something undesirable.
Anyways, poggers book. I'll give it 4 stars
As a teen who doesn't really read much about WW2, this is a good novel to start off if you want to experience WW2's ambience. The insomnia that comes after the tragedy, how relationships were affected because of the Nazis and Los Alamos. It was almost tragic to think even, that worse things happened in real life and that the novel is just a pathway mirror for it, that experiencing it for yourself is something undesirable.
Anyways, poggers book. I'll give it 4 stars
March 28, 2024
Meditative dual narrative on Hiroshima bomb from perspective of Boll and a girl who had her face reconstructed in the USA. It left me with many questions and I suppose the point was also about the inconceivable nature of events, beyond superficial rationalisation. But I wanted more of Boll’s backstory and I suppose the lack of remorse was troubling, but it also made me uneasy to judge. There seemed to be a narrative of ownership/power too, like a fast flowing river under sheet ice of the quotidian. And did the author write the women convincingly? I’m not sure to any of it but it was still intriguing.
March 18, 2021
Moved along a little slow. I feel this may have been to allow the reader to get to know / understand the characters. Anton a German scientist who leaves Germany moves to the US and helps build the Atomic Bomb. His wife Sophie who has a small yet important role in the story. Ekimo a Japanese women who as a child was badly disfigured due to the bombing of Hiroshima.
Two main characters are Anton and Ekimo. Anton holds most of the story. I was very interested in Ekimo's story and would have liked to have read more about her.
Two main characters are Anton and Ekimo. Anton holds most of the story. I was very interested in Ekimo's story and would have liked to have read more about her.
January 21, 2018
This has immediately moved onto my list of the best Canadian novels. What could easily have been an exercise in sentiment (which isn't always a bad thing, if you have read any Dickens) and a plunge into guilt-inducing historical fiction (which appeals to Social Justice Warriors, but not me) becomes, in the hands of Dennis Bock, a lovely immersion in regret, one of the most relentless of our emotional burdens.
April 5, 2020
This was an extremely slow book. But the emotions conveyed by the words were extrodinarily moving. Anton never got over it, no matter his will to help one Japanese girl. He blamed himself and in doing so doomed Sophie to a life with no happiness, other than her garden. No one can relate to what those men in the desert or on the plane went through after. This book could not do it either but allowed us to glimpse one mans deamons.
July 5, 2020
This novel really isn't the kind of novel I normally enjoy. I could see that it was well-researched and written. However, although all the characters are connected by the event of the bombing of Hiroshima, they each felt to me like they were totally unconnected to the others including between the husband and wife.
As I much prefer, character-driven plots, this one just left me wishing I hadn't bothered.
As I much prefer, character-driven plots, this one just left me wishing I hadn't bothered.
November 17, 2025
Powerful memoir like telling of the impacts of Hiroshima, and the people closely involved with its events. Emotional writing. Questions and descriptions of living your life, moving forward , and reflecting on your past. Incredibly poignantly written scene involving death of a love one. It's a story of remarkable people caught up in big events they can't necessarily control. But what does one do in the aftermath? Forget, reimagine , move forward? Ralph Ellison wrote "Geography is fate".
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 16, 2018
I really enjoyed this book! It surprised me in many ways and the writing was so poetic as to be relaxing to read. I'm surprised that this book has such a low rating. I'm glad that I decided to read it anyway as I usually don't enjoy books that average less than 3.8. I made an exception for this book because it has less than 1000 ratings.
June 6, 2020
Again, I am starting a review with – I really wanted to enjoy this book. Luckily, there were not many characters in this book, which worked for me as I did not find the characters all that interesting. I just did not find the story line interesting. The story dragged on ever so slowly, and, did not keep me interested.
October 27, 2020
Justice vs expediency, this is the question here, as it has been since the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Could Japan have been forced to surrender in any other form or would the war have gone on indefinitely? What if the bomb had been dropped on factories instead of people? Is the terror Japan brought to other Asian nations more or less unjust than the destruction caused by the bomb?
This book focuses on three people: Emiko, a Japanese woman who was six years old at the time and suffered not only physical damage but the loss of most of her family; Anton, a German scientist who could have just as easily have developed the bomb in his own country but left due to professional conflicts; and Sophie, his Austrian half-Jewish refugee wife. After an introduction of Emiko playing with her brother as the bomb falls, the story begins on the 50th anniversary of the bomb when Anton gives his annual speech at the university from which he`s retired in which he explains the necessity of the bomb and where Emiko asks him to be part of a documentary she is filming. This begins a series of vignettes where the story develops but there are also a series of flashbacks and questions about justice vs expediency in the intertwined personal lives of all three.
In a sense, this is the perfect university or readers` circle book because there are parallels on parallels, metaphors on metaphors, and similar questions of justice vs expediency posed in different ways. It is also poetic, with little that could offend sensibilities. (I remember reading reviews here of “Water for Elephants” that found it pornographic, so I speak from experience.) I found some of the closing of circles a little forced but not impossible. There was really a lot to think about here, in the end.
This book focuses on three people: Emiko, a Japanese woman who was six years old at the time and suffered not only physical damage but the loss of most of her family; Anton, a German scientist who could have just as easily have developed the bomb in his own country but left due to professional conflicts; and Sophie, his Austrian half-Jewish refugee wife. After an introduction of Emiko playing with her brother as the bomb falls, the story begins on the 50th anniversary of the bomb when Anton gives his annual speech at the university from which he`s retired in which he explains the necessity of the bomb and where Emiko asks him to be part of a documentary she is filming. This begins a series of vignettes where the story develops but there are also a series of flashbacks and questions about justice vs expediency in the intertwined personal lives of all three.
In a sense, this is the perfect university or readers` circle book because there are parallels on parallels, metaphors on metaphors, and similar questions of justice vs expediency posed in different ways. It is also poetic, with little that could offend sensibilities. (I remember reading reviews here of “Water for Elephants” that found it pornographic, so I speak from experience.) I found some of the closing of circles a little forced but not impossible. There was really a lot to think about here, in the end.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 103 reviews