When the Emperor Was Divine - Likewise Book Reviews

"I liked the book as a whole and it it was beautifully written, but Julie Otsuka has a sort of detached omniscient writing style that follows characters and tells stories through their perspective without ever actually defining the characters. It was pretty slow and a bit hard to follow. The characters were the woman, the boy, and the girl so the narration came off as a bit cold and distant. I’ve liked it in her other books but this is a story about how the characters perceived internment so I didn’t like how detached it felt. It fell flat because these stories have always been so emotion and people hold them close, so to see it form an unnamed perspective felt like if I were a European reading about Japanese internment. I read the book to understand how my family felt and I got an almost monotone retelling of events rather than experiences. Not my favorite of her work "

"Incredibly moving."