Word: atfirst
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...book that is curiously unremarkable,even memorably forgettable.“The Commoner” tells the story ofEmpress Haruko, Schwartz’s fictionalizedvision of Empress Michiko. The basicplot is one that’s been told over andover in other forms: exceptional youngwoman confronts the world, falters atfirst, but eventually finds herself. In thisversion, Haruko is a privileged but normalgirl growing up in Tokyo duringWorld War II. (As Schwartz writes withcharacteristic limpness, “One might saythat my childhood insularity was a formof hereditary protection in whose shade,like a pale, delicate mushroom, I grew...