The Printmaker's Daughter

Starred review from September 19, 2011
Govier’s (Creation) lavishly researched and brilliant historical novel, published in Canada last year as The Ghost Brush, is set during Japan’s repressive 19th-century Edo period, when artists and writers were suppressed and Japan hid itself from the outside world. Against that background the author fictionalizes the life of Oei, a little-known Japanese ukiyo-e (an artist of the everyday) whose gender keeps her from the recognition heaped upon her father, Hokusai. When Oei is young, her penniless father seeks artistic inspiration in the seedy Yoshiwara district, as well as with Shino, a young girl sold into prostitution by a vengeful husband. Oei accompanies her father on visits and we see through her eyes how powerless women live. Govier’s light linguistic touch draws readers into an increasingly harrowing tale of artistic crackdowns during which the defiant Hokusai takes to the road to escape the authorities and his creditors, often with his daughter in tow. These trips, later taken by Oei on her own, are fascinating ambulations inconceivable in modern society. Hokusai passes his questioning nature onto his daughter, who is always more mature and responsible than her quixotic father; she manages their meager funds, runs his studio, paints under his direction (and name), and nurses him through illness. Though Hokusai cherishes Oei above his other children (he fathered her at 40), he puts himself first, which is illustrated to heart-breaking effect when he railroads her into giving him one of her commissions. Govier examines women’s subservience to men through the dual narratives of Shino’s sale into prostitution and Oei’s deference to her father, even as two talented men, her lovers, nurture her talent and push her to seek recognition. The episodic nature of the novel, most apparent during a Dutch doctor’s visit to Japan, is its only flaw, and a minor one (at first glance, the doctor seems extraneous, but eventually he becomes more than a device to teach Oei about the outside world). Govier astonishes throughout in her ability to write epic themes intimately, particularly in the lyrical, absorbing, and intense final hundred pages. She illustrates how the clash between change and the forces of the status quo literally hold Oei hostage, with emotionally wrenching results.

October 15, 2011
The gifted daughter of a 19th-century Japanese artist chafes at her society's restrictions on women. Based on exhaustive research into the life of famed painter and printmaker Hokusai, this novel postulates that much of his work, particularly in his dotage, was actually that of his daughter and chief protégée, Oei. Born in 1800 in Edo (now Tokyo), Oei is her father's favorite, and his only child displaying a talent for drawing equal to his own. Oei follows her father to the Yoshiwara, the licensed red-light district of Edo, where he sketches the courtesans. Among these is Shino, a noblewoman sold into prostitution as punishment for some unknown transgression. Shino becomes Hokusai's mistress and teaches the young Oei manners and martial arts. After Shino marries, Hokusai and Oei travel throughout Japan and Hokusai becomes obsessed with the sea, which will be the subject of his best-known masterpiece, Great Wave Off Kanagawa. Never considered pretty (her prominent jaw earns her the nickname Ago-Ago, or chin-chin), Oei attracts lovers with her wit and talent and charms a Dutch art connoisseur. A brief marriage ends in divorce because Oei eschews housework and smokes and drinks sake like a man. For Hokusai, family exists only to serve his art. After his other children (and wives) either flee or die, Oei becomes her father's sole partner and caregiver. Their fortunes wax and wane with the vagaries of artistic fashion, not to mention the caprices of the ruling Shogun and his censors. Among their bestselling products are Beauties, scrolls depicting life among the courtesans, and shunga--pornography. As Hokusai ages (his life-span extends to an unheard-of, for that period, 90), he suffers from palsy, and Oei acts as his ghost-painter. While symbiotically joined to her father, Oei wonders if, after helping to prolong her father's life, she will ever have her own. Although her story is hamstrung by an episodic and gangly narrative structure, Oei's quandary will resonate with female artists today.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

November 1, 2011

After 2003's Creation, named a New York Times Notable Book, Canadian author Govier attempts to win over American audiences once again with this retitled work (published as Ghost Brush in Canada). The youngest daughter of then-struggling real-life Japanese artist Hokusai, Oei narrates the story of her life with her father, whom she affectionately calls "old man," and her role as his apprentice and eventual caretaker. Set in the lush Edo period between 1800 and 1867, the novel nonchalantly describes Oei's early encounters with courtesans; she even develops a close relationship with her father's beloved Shino, only ten years her senior. In Oei, Govier offers readers a portrait of an independent-minded woman with no qualms about having affairs, smoking a pipe, and divorcing a husband after a decade of marriage because he expected her to cook. VERDICT Although not as gifted as Anchee Min in characterizing her female protagonist, Govier nonetheless gives readers an engrossing narrative worth their time. The accompanying afterword describing the author's research is also noteworthy, as it melds fact with Govier's fiction to let readers decide for themselves what Oei's role might have been in her famous father's work.--Shirley N. Quan, Orange Cty. P.L., Santa Ana, CA

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from November 1, 2011
In Creation (2003), a New York Times Notable Book, Govier fictionalized an episode in the life of John James Audubon. In this historical novel of enveloping and eye-opening drama, she boldly imagines the dynamic between the master Japanese printmaker Hokusai Katsushika (17601849) and Oei, his daughter and assistant. With the zestfulness of Hokusai's renowned prints as her aesthetic template, Govier creates an intricate, panoramic, folding screenlike plot shaped by the belief that Oei may have played more than a supporting role in the making of her father's surprisingly vital and innovative late works. Govier takes readers deep into thriving Edo, where Hokusai and his fellow ukiyo-e (floating world) artists defy the shogun's censorious laws to paint lively portraits of the city's ritualized underworld of courtesans and gangsters. Hokusai is wily, witty, eccentric, and careless with money. Oei is smart, pragmatic, fearless, and exceptionally talented, evolving from a mischievous street urchin to a commanding artist. Although she rebels against the soul-crushing subservience demanded of women, she is still denied recognition for her art. 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.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)