Book Review

Mike Woods, Waterstone’s Books Quarterly

THE FOURTH TREASURE

Shimano is the sensei (master) of the Zenzen School of Calligraphy, but his work no longer makes sense. Tina Suzuki is the young neuroscientist who makes a study of the stroke-afflicted master. Shodo, the Japanese art of calligraphy, decorates dozens of pages of this novel. Its kanji (written characters based on Chinese ideograms) are not only a means of communication but an art form in themselves. So informs one of the hundreds of sidebars that contain morsels of poetry, extracts from calligraphy manuals and footnotes on neuroscience. Beauty is not the surface but the purpose of this novel. The natural world, the art of writing, emotion and philosophy complement one another. This delicate story of love, illness, the deprivations of old age, hidden meanings and the transcendent power of art, contains nothing perfunctory or mechanical, but is full of intricate ideas.