Snow Falling on Cedars

By: David Guterson

Narrated by: Tim Pigott-Smith

Length: 3 hrs and 10 mins

Publisher's Summary

When a Japanese-American is charged with the murder of a local fisherman, more than one man’s guilt is at stake. The novel that inspired the film starring Ethan Hawke, directed by Scott Hicks (Shine).

San Piedro Island in Puget Sound is a place so isolated that no one who lives there can afford to make enemies. But in 1954 a local fisherman is found suspiciously drowned, and a Japanese-American named Kabuo Miyamoto is charged with his murder.

In the course of the ensuing trial, it becomes clear that what is at stake is more than one man’s guilt. For on San Piedro, memory grows as thickly as cedar trees and the fields of ripe strawberries - memories of a charmed love affair between a white boy and a Japanese girl who grew up to become Kabuo’s wife; memories of land desired, paid for, and lost. Above all, San Piedro is haunted by the memory of what happened to its Japanese residents during World War II, when an entire community was sent into exile while its neighbours watched.

©1994 David Guterson (P)2013 HarperCollins Publishers Limited

Critic Reviews

"Gripping, tragic and densely atmospheric. Snow Falling on Cedars makes compelling listening and is brilliantly narrated by Tim Pigott-Smith.” ( Norfolk Journal)

“Compelling… heart-stopping. Finely wrought, flawlessly written.” ( New York Times)

“Luminous… a beautifully assured and full-bodied novel [that] becomes a tender examination of fairness and forgiveness… Guterson has fashioned something haunting and true.” ( Time Magazine)

An adagio to love and loss

Powerful yet pensive. Deeply moving and finely structured. This is great literature without labored attempts at genre or style. Narration was superb. One of the best works on Audible I have encountered.

NOTE this in an ABRIDGED version

I read the book in paper format last year and purchased this as a refresher (for book club). For the purpose of refreshing my mind,this was great, but as a read in itself it was too short, and did not do the book justice.

Didn't expect yellowface in an audiobook

If you haven't had enough for a lifetime already of charicatures of people of East Asian descent then go ahead, this (white male) narrator may be just what you are looking for. David Guterson should have his publisher recall & scrap this recording. As a matter of fact, Audible should consider that too. It is clearly racist.