The Tale of Murasaki

"The Tale of Murasaki" is an amazing book, it is intriguing, spell-binding and contains an athmosphere of 11th Century Japan so believable that you will find yourself completely absorbed by it. Liza Crihfield Dalby has managed to weave in Murasaki's poetry with the story in the most beautiful way, and make it all make sense. Murasaki comes to life in this diary style book, and by the time you reach the end of it, it feels as if you know her [Murasaki] personally. The book contains so much "cultural knowledge", that it gives you an insight to 11th Century Japanese religious beliefs and ceremonies, social structure, imperial court life, clothing, rural as well as urban life, social life... If you liked Geisha, by the same author, or The Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden, this is the book for you. But I also recommend this book to anyone with an interest for Japanese culture, history and/or poetry. This book is pure beauty.

If you were told a book was about a culture that communicated in 5 line poetry, who's women painted their teeth black, had no moral problem with casual sex but felt violated if a man saw their face, a culture who believed all negative emotions & illness were caused by wandering spirits, you would be pretty sure that book was science fiction, right? "The Tale of Murasaki" is that book, & it is most definitely NOT science fiction!In "The Tale of Murasaki", Liza Dalby has recreated a society so completely alien to Western minds that it seems otherwordly. Yet, so vivid is this recreation that the reader is often surprised to look up at walls rather than rice-paper screens! Her descriptions of life in a society based upon the appreciation of beauty is wonderful; gardens that have been dust for a thousand years bloom again in this novel. In the Heien culture of 10th & 11th century Japan, people of the upper classes communicated in a 5-line poetry form called "waka". Dalby skillfully uses the actual waka's written by Murasaki thruout the novel to express moods & illuminate her character's motivations. She also weaves into this novel the actual diary excerpts that still exist from this mysterious woman, & does it so seamlessly that it's nearly impossible to tell where quotation ends & invention begins!Additionally, Ms. Dalby succeeds in one of the most difficult tasks a writer faces: she successfully ages her protagonist so that the character at 37 is more thoughtful & mature than the character at 17. Many celebrated novelists fail at this, but Dalby shows us Murasaki's growth naturally & beautifully.The only flaw this reader found is an assumed familiarity with ancient Japanese political systems & religious symbolism. Not being sure what the significance of "the Lotus Sutra" is in Buddhism, I have no way of understanding why the characters are endlessly copying this on the back of letters or diary entries. Nor did this reader understand the family inter-relationships amongst the Japanese nobility of the period. However, these gaps serve only to inspire further research on the part of the reader. I'm sure I'm not the only person who will finish "The Tale of Murasaki" & then head to the library to learn more about 11th century Japan. Liza Dalby has done a marvelous job in this book!

I'm sure that anyone who reads this book will find it just as entertaining as I did, if not more. Liza Dalby illustrates in beautiful detail the lifestyle that Murasaki and the nobles at the courts and at the palaces led during this period of Japan. She brings Murasaki Shikibu to life through the pages of The Tale of Murasaki: the ceremonies and rituals, the kinds of foods and the fashion among the women at court. I found the manner in which Dalby writes Murasaki's life to be very delightful. Murasaki Shikibu might be the first to write a novel, such as the Tales of Genji, but she is also a woman and a smart one at that. Dalby does a wonderful job at piecing together the life of this ancient writer.

At long last, a gorgeously written book that you can trust to give you a living sense of being inside the head of a fascinating Japanese female character. Lady Murasaki was a real court lady in 11th century Japan, credited with writing the world's first novel, The Tale of Genji. From the beginning when she is a young girl in her father's house, hoping for an invitation to serve a court and making ups tories about it, we are seeing through her eyes an amazing world. Everything about it is fundamentally different from ours--the architecture that reflects and shapes social life; the eleborate rituals that stem from a naive animism; the clothing, every detail of which has significance; the skill required of every courtier to communicate in on-the-spot elegant poetry. But especially seductive is Murasaki's emotional life. The feelings are universal: desire, love, ambition, hostility, motherhood, pride--but the way they must be expressed and the significance accorded them in Japanese society are amazingly different. Through Dalby's skill at bringing up just the right psychological cues from beneath the stylized social surface, we fall in with Murasaki's point of view, her sense of time, her endurance of loss, her choices in times of crisis and despair. Her lovers, both male and female, her revered father, her worthless brother, and beloved daughter are as distinct and real as she. This book could only have been written by a woman who is also a scholar with an intimate knowledge of things Japanese, a mother, and an artist. Dalby has brought all these sensibilities together in a masterpiece.