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From the best-selling author of The Elegance of the Hedgehog comes a story about a woman's journey to discover the father she never knew and a love she never thought possible.
Rose has just turned forty when she gets a call from a lawyer asking her to come to Kyoto for the reading of her estranged father’s will. And so for the first time in her life she finds herself in Japan, where Paul, her father’s assistant, is waiting to greet her.
As Paul guides Rose along a mysterious itinerary designed by her deceased father, her bitterness and anger are soothed by the stones and the trees in the Zen gardens they move through. During their walks, Rose encounters acquaintances of her father—including a potter and poet, an old lady friend, his housekeeper and chauffeur—whose interactions help her to slowly begin to accept a part of herself that she has never before acknowledged.
As the reading of the will gets closer, Rose’s father finally, posthumously, opens his heart to his daughter, offering her a poignant understanding of his love and a way to accept all she has lost.
“[A Single Rose] is interspersed with aphoristic Japanese tales from various periods, as melancholy is gradually transmuted into joy.”—The New Yorker
“Barbery brings her usual lush descriptions to this slim novel, weaving traditional Japanese stories through the narrative. [A] luminous meditation on grief.”—Booklist
“With elegant and careful prose, [Barbery] offers descriptions of Kyoto and Japanese culture that transcend the genre of a travelogue. This novel will appeal to readers who long for happy endings and escape.”—Library Journal
“This novel offers the pleasures of a poetic travelogue and an homage to a place and culture.
A Single Rose is a modern fairy tale... an evocative, transplanted retelling of the tale of a sleeping beauty.”—New York Journal of Books
“This plaintive novel impresses with its smoothness.”—Publishers Weekly
“It is a joy to take a stroll with Rose and Paul while savoring the beauty of camellias, peonies and wild irises, in a world of muted, delicate colors and to the sound of their elegant words.”—Ouest-France
“Though A Single Rose is centered around vulnerable, tenacious Rose, its core is found in its Japanese setting. The novel balances lush, cultivated gardens and weighted symbolism with mischievous foxes, matcha, sliced eel, and sushi, all forming “one happy chaos” and a fascinating maze of emotional release.”—Foreword Reviews
“A moving and successful novel. Richly perfumed, delicate, light, and inspired.”—L’OBS
“In this story Rose explores an inner self that illuminates her darkness and leads her to overcome her sadness.”—L’orient litteraire
“At once a journey through a secret landscape and a poetic transposition of the enigma of love.”—Actualitte