 The portions of the book that follow the character Emiko <unk> is written as a first @-@ person narrative , while the portions following Sophie and Anton Böll use the third @-@ person . The tone was described as " disturbingly calm " . Its central theme is that of identity and attempts to find solace . Bock states " All three of the main characters in The Ash Garden are refugees who don 't belong anywhere . Each has a desperate search for home . " In Harper 's Magazine , Pico Iyer compares The Ash Garden with Michael Ondaatje 's The English Patient as " a book that ends where Bock 's begins " . An essay in the journal Canadian Ethnic Studies , looked at The Ash Garden from the a Japanese historical perspective , finding strong similarities between the real @-@ life Hiroshima Maiden <unk> and the character Emiko , but noting it was not a roman à clef . 
