SNOW

A romantic story etched as delicately as frost on a windowpane, this French bestseller from 1999 about a young Japanese poet’s path to wisdom is Fermine’s lyrical US debut.

At 17, near the end of the 19th century, Yuko has gone into the mountains of his native Hokkaido for inspiration and returned to his monk father with the decision that he will devote his life to writing haiku. Forced by his father to reconsider, he returns to the wilderness in winter and comes back determined to write only about snow. This Yuko does for several years, using the most ethereal of poetic forms to extol the virtues of that most ethereal of elements; then one day the Imperial Poet comes to call, having caught wind of this young purist. The Poet is impressed, but he’s also struck by the whiteness in Yuko’s poems and urges Yuko to find color. Two years later—during this interval, Yuko discovers the sensual delights of lovemaking—the Poet returns, this time with a mysterious young woman to offer the snowbound youth training at the hands of the Poet’s own aged mentor, Soseki. Yuko agrees, and walks south to find the old man; enroute, he discovers a beautiful European woman frozen in the ice high in the mountains. Marveling at this, he reaches Soseki’s house, where he learns that the great master is blind. Despite reservations about what teachings such a man can offer him about color, Yuko perseveres; as a result, he is able to make the connection between his discovery in the mountains and Soseki, one that allows the old master to die happily and Yuko to fulfill his talent and find love.

Crystalline and spare, this tale nevertheless packs substantial heat in its passionate embrace of youthful ideals and matters of the heart.