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List Price: $24.95Amazon.com's Price: $16.47 You Save: $8.48 (34%)Prices subject to change.
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780385515719
ISBN: 0385515715
Label: Nan A. Talese
Manufacturer: Nan A. Talese
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 368
Publication Date: January 22, 2008
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Release Date: January 22, 2008
Sales Rank: 23216
Studio: Nan A. Talese
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
It is 1959 when Haruko, a young woman of good family, marries the Crown Prince of Japan, the heir to the Chrysanthemum Throne. She is the first non-aristocratic woman to enter the longest-running, almost hermetically sealed, and mysterious monarchy in the world. Met with cruelty and suspicion by the Empress and her minions, Haruko is controlled at every turn. The only interest the court has in her is her ability to produce an heir. After finally giving birth to a son, Haruko suffers a nervous breakdown and loses her voice. However, determined not to be crushed by the imperial bureaucrats, she perseveres. Thirty years later, now Empress herself, she plays a crucial role in persuading another young woman—a rising star in the foreign ministry—to accept the marriage proposal of her son, the Crown Prince. The consequences are tragic and dramatic.
Told in the voice of Haruko, meticulously researched and superbly imagined, The Commoner is the mesmerizing, moving, and surprising story of a brutally rarified and controlled existence at once hidden and exposed, and of a complex relationship between two isolated women who, despite being visible to all, are truly understood only by each other. With the unerring skill of a master storyteller, John Burnham Schwartz has written his finest novel yet.
Average Rating: 
Rating: -
When she is a young woman, the well-educated, tennis-loving Haruko is wooed by the Crown Prince of Japan. She eventually accepts his affections, the first commoner ever to marry into the Imperial Family. But this choice will have ramifications far beyond what she ever imagined.
Such is the premise of John Schwartz's "The Commoner," which traces Haruko's life from her girlhood during World War II to her old age at the Imperial Palace. It takes its inspiration from the real story of ... Read More
Rating:  -
I have never read anything by this author before, and when I picked up this book, I was not sure I would like it. After I finished it, I longed for more of the same. The book in written in the first person, by a man, told through the eyes of a young woman....very well done and very clever indeed.
In The COMMONER, we meet Haruko Endo as a young girl, a "commoner" chosen to marry Japan's crown prince after WWII. After she marries the crown prince, she begins living a life of miserable isolation ... Read More
Rating:  -
My book club read this book and we're all in agreement .... it was just okay. It started out good, and fell flat around the middle of the story. It actually became rather boring .... I would not suggest this reading to other friends ... did not hold my interest at all.
Rating: -
In this roman a clef, Schwartz shows the life being drained from a vibrant young woman who falls in love with the crowned prince of Japan. Here, ritual replaces substance and future history governs the present. There is no spontaneity nor room for change. What was done will be done.
If anyone has ever envied the life of royalty, this book will show you the downside of not owning your own life, but rather playing a roll.
Sometimes the writing is repetitive. But overall this is a compelling ... Read More
Rating: -
The Commoner tells the story of Haruku, the daughter of a Japanese business man who catches the eye of the Crown Prince of Japan. Basically, this is a Japanese Cinderella story with a more equivocal ending. Despite the timelessness of the story and the evocative setting of the Imperial Palace, The Commoner is unsuccessful on many levels. Schwartz's attempt to do too much in too few pages is the most glaring problem. The narrative covers Haruku's life before the Imperial Palace, the Crown Prince's courtship, ... Read More
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