Summary and Book Reviews

The Printmaker's Daughter: Summary and book reviews of The Printmaker's Daughter by Katherine Govier, plus links to an excerpt from The Printmaker's Daughter and a biography of Katherine Govier.

The Printmaker's Daughter
A Novel
by Katherine Govier
Paperback: Nov 2011,
512 pages.

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Readers' Rating: Not Yet Rated
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Synopsis
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BOOK SUMMARY

Recounting the story of her life, Oei plunges us into the colorful world of nineteenth-century Edo (Tokyo), in which courtesans rub shoulders with poets, warriors consort with actors, and the arts flourish in an unprecedented moment of creative upheaval. Oei and Hokusai live among writers, novelists, tattoo artists, and prostitutes, evading the spies of the repressive shogunate as they work on Hokusai's countless paintings and prints. Wielding her brush, rejecting domesticity in favor of dedication to the arts, Oei defies all expectations of womanhood - all but one. A dutiful daughter to the last, she will obey the will of her eccentric father, the man who

Vivid, daring, and unforgettable, The Printmaker's Daughter shines fresh light on art, loyalty, and the tender and indelible bond between a father and daughter.

First published in Canada as The Ghost Brush

BookBrowse Review
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Reader Reviews

BookBrowse

Govier weaves the saga of Oei's life into Japanese customs - such as the parade of courtesans, or the shaved eyebrows that signify a married woman - in a fashion that develops an intimacy between the reader, Oei, and this complex culture. It's a potent combination that results in a mystically engaging story, and though Oei may not think her life is full of incident, her legacy certainly is. (Reviewed by Mark James).

Full Review Members Only (1032 words).

Media Reviews

Kirkus Reviews
Although her story is hamstrung by an episodic and gangly narrative structure, Oei's quandary will resonate with female artists today.

Booklist
Starred Review. From the hothouse ferment of art studios, bordellos, and Kabuki theater to the tonic countryside, Govier's spectacularly detailed, eventful, and emotionally stormy novel is populated by vivid characters and charged with searing insights into Japanese history and the diabolically difficult lives of women and artists.

Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Lavishly researched and brilliant... Govier astonishes throughout in her ability to write epic themes intimately, particularly in the lyrical, absorbing, and intense final hundred pages.

Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Govier's expansive historical novel turns the spotlight on Oei, the 'ghost brush' attributed to some of her father's famous prints, and a character that drives a compulsively readable novel.

Recent Reader Reviews

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The Yoshiwara: Edo's 19th Century Red Light District

Katherine Govier's The Printmaker's Daughter is historical fiction based on the real-life Japanese printmaker, Hokusai - best known for his ukiyo-e* series The Adonis Plant

entitled Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji - and his daughter, Ei. The character Ei spends much of her early life in the Yoshiwara, or red light district, of Edo (modern day Tokyo) where her father helps pay his bills by producing erotica known as shunga. Ei, or Oei as he calls her, works as her father's apprentice.

In real life, just as in the book, the Yoshiwara was set off from the city, and was the only place in Edo where prostitution was legal. It was also the only place that chinen, or townspeople, could mix with samurai, members of the powerful military caste. It was an area both set off from, but inherent in, Japanese culture. Weapons were not...

Continued... Beyond the Book (members only)

Readalikes
Genres and Themes

Readalikes

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