Barnes & NobleHotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford

The Title Says It All

've probably waited too long to review this book, b/c I just can't get past the title for summarizing the entire book: the novel is about an old hotel - and its basement contents - on the border between Nihon Machi (Japan town) and Chinatown in 1940's Seattle. The story of first love is sweet, yet what happens to Keiko's family is anything but; it's bitter. So how to review the book beyond the perfect title? It's a story of moving forward after a great loss, but the moving forward becomes hugely complicated by the discovery of the Panama Hotel's basement contents: personal effects from Japanese families forcibly removed from the Nihon Machi area of Seattle to internment camps in 1942. Henry is catapulted into the past when he sees a TV story about the articles, and sees a particular parasol. Could the parasol have belonged to his long-lost first love? And.... is an extremely rare jazz recording in the pile of personal effects? As Henry begins his search through the old trunks and suitcases in the hotel basement, we start learning about Henry's earlier life in Seattle. He was a young Chinese boy going to a white school in 1942; he is bullied mercilessly and has no friends - until he meets Keiko while working in the school kitchen. She is also a scholarship student. They develop a tentative friendship based on a mutual love of jazz. Henry's father would have a stroke if he knew Henry was friends w/ a Japanese girl, b/c Henry's father still avidly follows the years-long depredations of China by Japan. Yet he wants Henry to be only American so badly that he sends him to a white school and won't let him speak Cantonese at home, even though Henry's parents have limited English. So there is a lack of communication w/ Henry's parents for the many years this book covers - a lack which Henry shares w/ his own son in the 1980's portions of the story. This is a such a sweet, yet heartbreaking, story of long-lost love and first love; it is also a love story to old Seattle and its swinging jazz scene; a devotion to old friends; and a story about father-son connections that either grow or die. I recommend this sweet story about reconciling w/ one's past. However, my one caveat would be that if one has suffered the recent loss of someone important to them, Mr. Ford does such a beautiful job of showing us how Henry misses his wife that I will not share this book w/ my Mom, who is still mourning the loss of my father three years ago. I will give it 4.4 stars, reluctantly rounded down to 4.