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Release Date: 2009-10-06
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| Features• ISBN13: 9780345505347
• Condition: New
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Started slow but picked up by the endThis book started out slow but picked up by the end and actually turned out to be a really good read. Historical fiction is always interesting to me because you can learn a lot and possibly read a good story too and that is the case with Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet. The story is tragic in terms of what historically happened to the Japanese families yet inspiring as a love story and written so beautifully and simplistic that the story just flows.
A wonderful story !This book brought out so many emotions from my past and present. It's about love, betrayal and forgiveness. It's never to late or you're never to old, to make things right.
Bittersweet and DelightfulI loved this book; it is among my favorites. It brings a little history of what Japanese people were subjected to during and after the war. The children were so believable, facing the usual badgering and bullying, etc. that still goes on today. It is a quick read; you won't want to put it down.
beautiful romanceThis was a beautiful romance novel. One of my favorite books for all times. It gives you a unique and real picture of times during the war. It is put together so well, and beautifully written.
Place and character, well-blendedHotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet is a novel of character. The youthful Henry, with his torn allegiances, and the jazz-musician Sheldon stand out. The most striking character of the novel, though, is the setting itself.
1940's Seattle comes alive, with its jazz clubs, its neighborhoods, its restaurants, even its weather. Ford draws you into a moment of time -- and a shameful one at that -- and asks you look, closely and carefully, at the people who lived it.
Despite what we may want to believe, the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII happened virtually without protest. Ford, with a deft and light touch, makes this clear. In the basement of an old hotel, forgotten objects create a bridge between memories, between Henry's past and his present, and between the choices he embraced and the ones he let go. Those same objects -- an umbrella, a birth certificate, an album -- are reminders today, in 2010, of the things, past and present, that we take for granted -- including, sometimes, our freedom.
Product Description"Sentimental, heartfelt….the exploration of Henry’s changing relationship with his family and with Keiko will keep most readers turning pages...A timely debut that not only reminds readers of a shameful episode in American history, but cautions us to examine the present and take heed we don’t repeat those injustices."-- Kirkus Reviews
“A tender and satisfying novel set in a time and a place lost forever, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet gives us a glimpse of the damage that is caused by war--not the sweeping damage of the battlefield, but the cold, cruel damage to the hearts and humanity of individual people. Especially relevant in today's world, this is a beautifully written book that will make you think. And, more importantly, it will make you feel."
-- Garth Stein, New York Times bestselling author of The Art of Racing in the Rain
“Jamie Ford's first novel explores the age-old conflicts between father and son, the beauty and sadness of what happened to Japanese Americans in the Seattle area during World War II, and the depths and longing of deep-heart love. An impressive, bitter, and sweet debut.”
-- Lisa See, bestselling author of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
In the opening pages of Jamie Ford’s stunning debut novel, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, Henry Lee comes upon a crowd gathered outside the Panama Hotel, once the gateway to Seattle’s Japantown. It has been boarded up for decades, but now the new owner has made an incredible discovery: the belongings of Japanese families, left when they were rounded up and sent to internment camps during World War II. As Henry looks on, the owner opens a Japanese parasol.
This simple act takes old Henry Lee back to the 1940s, at the height of the war, when young Henry’s world is a jumble of confusion and excitement, and to his father, who is obsessed with the war in China and having Henry grow up American. While “scholarshipping” at the exclusive Rainier Elementary, where the white kids ignore him, Henry meets Keiko Okabe, a young Japanese American student. Amid the chaos of blackouts, curfews, and FBI raids, Henry and Keiko forge a bond of friendship–and innocent love–that transcends the long-standing prejudices of their Old World ancestors. And after Keiko and her family are swept up in the evacuations to the internment camps, she and Henry are left only with the hope that the war will end, and that their promise to each other will be kept.
Forty years later, Henry Lee is certain that the parasol belonged to Keiko. In the hotel’s dark dusty basement he begins looking for signs of the Okabe family’s belongings and for a long-lost object whose value he cannot begin to measure. Now a widower, Henry is still trying to find his voice–words that might explain the actions of his nationalistic father; words that might bridge the gap between him and his modern, Chinese American son; words that might help him confront the choices he made many years ago.
Set during one of the most conflicted and volatile times in American history, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet is an extraordinary story of commitment and enduring hope. In Henry and Keiko, Jamie Ford has created an unforgettable duo whose story teaches us of the power of forgiveness and the human heart.
From the Hardcover edition.
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