Finding the sweet among the bitter

     If you're looking for a feel-good book, a warm - and yes, sentimental - story that may well bring a tear to your eye (as it did to mine*), then Jamie Ford's Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet could be just the thing. It's a lovely light piece of fiction based on real-life dark days, specifically the later stages of World War II when Japanese Americans were sent to internment camps, communities were divided by racial mistrust or even hatred, and life changed for many people.

    Henry Lee is growing up in Seattle's Chinese quarter. A hard worker, he stands out as the only pupil of oriental origin at his school, so he gets more than his share of bullying. Then Keiko, a young Japanese girl, arrives and a friendship develops between the two, one which intensifies when anti-Japanese feeling runs high and Keiko places her trust in Henry.

    Forty years on, Henry, now a widower, is still living in his old neighbourhood. When the new owners of the long empty Panama Hotel discover in their basement the possessions the displaced Japanese families were forced to leave behind when they were sent to camps in 1942, Henry wonders if there could be a trace of Keiko there among the forgotten trunks and boxes, piled high and thick with dust.

    Weaving back and forth from the 1940s to the 80s, Henry's own story is a touching one, and the book as a whole is a soft-focus treatment of what must have been harsh and harrowing events. Two things struck me as not sitting quite as they should: Henry is portrayed as an 'old' man, and yet he's in his mid-fifties, while he and Keiko as youngsters sound remarkably sophisticated and grown-up for children of twelve and thirteen. However, neither point lessened my enjoyment of this book which pitches duty to family against loyalty to friends, and presents it in a neat, fluent and affecting way.

*(For those who've read it, it was a scene involving Henry's friend Sheldon which got me!).

Comments

[Carolina]

This seems like a great book. I love when there are time spans, like in a chapter the character is 10 and then it's 80 (I Know, it's kind of stupid).

[Jo]

I was one of the many that loved this book - touches you on so many levels and I learnt a lot as well. I had little or no knowledge of the subject before this book.

[Cornflower]

If I remember correctly, David Guterson's 'Snow Falling on Cedars', set in the same part of the world as 'Hotel', includes scenes about the internment camps, but otherwise this was a new subject to me, too.

[LizF]

Yep - same bit got me too! A really lovely book, and one that taught me a lot because like you and Jo, I knew very little about the plight of the Japanese resident in America during WW2.

[adele geras]

I liked this book too and agree with you about the age thing. I think another good book about this time and situation, though I haven't read it myself is one called BUTTERFLY'S SHADOW by Lee Langley. I saw Lynne Reid Banks recommending it on telly ( Mariella Frostrup's prog on Sky Arts) and made a note to try and find it.