

The two older brothers, Alex and Kyle, spend the story struggling with their respective worth to the family, climaxed by the argument over which one’s death will be of most benefit to all the others. Like many youngest children, she is ideally suited for the role, used to sitting by and observing while her older siblings carry the action. The least forceful sibling is Kim, the first person narrator.

Most interesting (and least likeable) is Vi, the older sister, the emotional one, who reacts to everything in a huge way, driving the family forward, literally and figuratively, with her energy and her anger. It is the story of ultimate sacrifice and the meaning of family. Other than that, the novel is an emotional rollercoaster, as the family members try to deal with the possible death of one of them, which reaches a climax when they realize that they actually have a choice as to which one of them will die. This is the tale of four young adults, beautifully portrayed products of a dysfunctional family, who are allowed, through a slip in time, to work through their former relationships in order to discover how much they really mean to each other. It is also the story of families, and how they function together. It is about people and how their past lives and relationships affect them. Very refreshing for those of us who are tired of the same old “time travel paradox” which I won’t bore you with, because this author doesn’t.īecause that is not what the story is about. The story goes on the assumption that what is, is, and what has happened, has happened, will happen, and there is no point in worrying about it. However, the author makes no effort to explain how time travel works or to explain anything else, for that matter. It talks a lot about time travel, because the characters are aware from the first chapter that their lives are being manipulated. The Arrow Garden is a delicately-wrought tale of truth, selfhood, and acceptance, which transcends time in its lyrical exploration of what it means to live.This book is a rarity in the Time Travel genre. To visit the past or the future, even in imagination, is to change it. Setting out on a hike to a mountain village shrine, away from the charred city, she begins a life to which she is not sure she is entitled, a life which feels like living on the other side of the sky. In wartime Tokyo, Tanaka Mie finds herself wandering the burned-out ruins of her dead parents' fire-bombed home with only hazy recollections of how she survived.

When lonely and socially isolated translator, Gareth, takes up traditional Japanese archery in 1990s Bristol, he learns that to study Kyudo is to reach out, to another culture, another time, other people… But when one of them reaches back, two lives that should never have touched become strangely entangled.
