The Ginger Tree

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The story of Mary, a rather innocent young woman, travelling by ship to China to marry a man she barely knows, pulled me in right from the first paragraph and held me in its thrall right to the end. As her story unfolds we witness immense global changes, including Japan’s emergence as a military power, from the perspective of a single woman.

The Ginger Tree by Christopher Hampton | Goodreads The Ginger Tree by Christopher Hampton | Goodreads

Then she goes on, ‘Afterwards it was the thing I tried to put from my mind first, before all the other things that had to go too, if I was to truly own myself again. Japanese women couldn’t get enough of Western fashion and she found a niche that pandered to this trend. She has signed up to a lifetime of loneliness, ‘years of aching feet and a half-frozen heart’, but at least she does not have to pretend to fit in. We take pride in offering a wide selection of used books, from classics to hidden gems, ensuring there? Twisting her way alone to self-sufficiency, Mary, like the ginger tree growing alien but stubborn shoots in a Japanese garden, survives: ""out here is the bed I've made for myself.

I grabbed this one from my Little Free Library in the early days of the pandemic, when the public library was closed, but for some reason, just got around to reading it now.

Editions of The Ginger Tree by Oswald Wynd - Goodreads

It is not a candy-coated tale of love and success; it is a starkly realistic story about life, love and survival. Mary is no ordinary romantic heroine but instead a brave adventurer who learns to trust her instincts and use her intelligence to create a life for herself, even in the face of unbearable loss.This novel was first published way back in 1977, and has been reprinted several times so must be a popular story! He is best known for his novel The Ginger Tree, which was adapted into a BBC televised mini-series in 1989. The book changes for me when Mary falls in love with Count Kentaro Kurihama, the enigmatic Japanese military attaché, and becomes pregnant. When World War II came he joined the Scots Guards but was then commissioned into the Intelligence Corps and sent to Malaya.