Book Review: Hotel On the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

A few months ago, my sister-in-law (a fellow English major), recommended a book to me: Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford. You can get it here (and I'm sure in your local bookstore as well). It is also out in paperback, though this is the link to the hardcover edition.

First of all, I will say: read it. Read it. Read it.

Now that I have that out of the way, perhaps you'd like to know why I'm telling you to read it. Hotel is Ford's debut novel. You can check out his website here. It is a very lovely, quiet story set during the days surrounding the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and during the early 80's. The main character is Henry, a young Chinese boy (and then an older man, reminiscing) living in San Francisco. Henry's father is a loyal Chinese man who has many prejudices against the Japanese due to their invasion of his province in China. Henry is sent by his parents to an American school to gain a better education than that available at the Chinese school down the street. There he meets Keiko, a Japanese-American girl, whose family has been in America for some time, and who considers herself an American. Henry and Keiko's family are very different in this regard. Their friendship is not looked on with pleasure by Henry's parents, to say the least, and in the days following Pearl Harbor, Henry fights to stay in touch with Keiko as she and her family, as well as all the other Japanese-Americans in San Francisco, are rounded up and shipped off to internment camps. All these memories come to the forefront when, in the 1980's, the old Japanese Panama Hotel is finally bought and remodeled. In the basement is found many of the belongings which the Japanese-Americans hid for safe-keeping when they left, thinking they would someday return (which most did not).


This image is taken from colorlines.com.

This was an aspect of the WWII era about which I knew very little. We pretty much glossed over internment camps in our quick overview of WWII in high school. Part of what made this story so fascinating was the personal way in which that story was told, and the way in which it is described from the perspective of those who went through it. Yet, the internment camps do not take on a political character. The story does not become bogged down in trying to make a statement about internment camps or anything of that nature. Rather, the internment of the Japanese-American citizens serves as a part of Henry's growth, as an element of the story, much like any other element. In that simple treatment, I think the reader is left with more of an impression of what the camps meant for countless Americans of Japanese descent, as well as their friends and families. It is a soft, quiet way of dealing with them. It is not the central idea or point of the novel, but a part of the journey the characters take.


Picture is taken from a Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_American_internment

In addition to the way Ford treated historical facts with a simple, creative touch, the character of Henry was really beautifully written. I don't know that I have ever enjoyed reading a male character so much as I enjoyed reading Henry. There's something quietly strong, yet moving about the way Ford wrote this character. I admired Henry and I rooted for him. He struggles between two different worlds both as a young boy, and then again as a widowed man in his 50's. You feel the struggle, yet you always feel that the older Henry has this aspect of peace still settled on him, like a warm blanket that encloses even those struggles and losses.

It's a wonderful, lovely, moving story. The novel, as the title suggests, has just the right amount of bitter and sweet. Go ahead, pick it up and give it a go. Happy reading!