Several years ago I read Otsuka's When the Emporer was Divine at my dad's recommendation. That was a novel about a Japanese-American family taken to an internment camp during WWII. It was short, economical, well-written, and kind of a special book.
Buddha in the Attic has all of those characteristics too. It's about a group of women who come over from Japan to be married to men they haven't met. Some of their lives go as expected, others are disappointed, but all of them need to find ways to adjust to life in America. What was most unique about this book was the voice - it was told in first-person plural, where the women (never completely enumerated and named) tell about different parts of their experiences in different chapters. It made me wonder if Otsuka had created a set of individuals and then grouped their stories, or if she conceived the narrative this way.
Otsuka's books are like perfect tiny diamond stud earrings. You can never have enough but they are quite beautiful.
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