Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet (original 2009; edition 2009)

3.5/5 ( )

Told in two timelines, one in the middle of WW2 and one in the 1980s both centring on the same boy/man. In its heart, this is a love story and a bittersweet one at that, as the title would suggest.
I do love books that teach me something, and before reading this, I had no idea about the internment camps for Japanese Americans which were set up after the bombing of pearl harbour. I did enjoy this book but wasn't wowed by it. ( )

A very well written book about the Asian community in California during WWII. It was written in two time periods: the 1940s story and the 1980s story about the Chinese man who is now a widower. In some ways the story was a fun, unrealistic romance novel. In other ways, the story was a great historical novel and brought a period of American history to life. Definitely worth the read. ( )

This book was suggested to me after I read The Stationery Shop by Marjan Kamali because it was similar since it was about a young couple who fell in love in turbulent times and were separated due to events in those times. I can see the comparison but I didn't quite believe the first love story presented in this book as much as in the other.

This book presents Henry Lee at two different times in his life. The first is 1942, just after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and the USA entered World War II. The second is 1986 when Henry is fairly recently widowed with a college age son. In 1942 Henry was 12 going on 13 so in 1986 he would have been 56. Henry was the only child in a Chinese immigrant family. As such his parents have high hopes for him and they arrange to have him attend a school at which he is the only Oriental student. He is further ostracized because, as a scholarship student, he must work in the school cafeteria serving lunch to his classmates. One day he is joined by Keiko, a Japanese-American girl just his age, who is also a scholarship student. The two soon become close and Henry is devastated when Keiko and her family are interned for the duration of the war. Henry manages to see Keiko several times shortly after the internment and they swear to write to each other and wait for each other until the war ends. When Keiko's letters become sporadic and then stop Henry is comforted by the mail clerk at the post office where he always sends his letters to her. Ethel and Henry start to date and they eventually marry. When Ethel dies of cancer Henry is again adrift. He sees a news article about the new owner of the Panama Hotel finding belongings of the former Japanese residents of Seattle in the basement. It brings back memories of Keiko and the times they shared. He is allowed to access the goods in the basement and with the help of his son and his son's girlfriends he is able to find Keiko's family's belongings. His chief reason for going through them is to find a record made by a small jazz band which featured Henry's friend Sheldon on saxophone. The girlfriend uncovers it but it has been broken. Sheldon is still alive but quite ill and living in a care home. Henry had really wanted to find the record to give it to Sheldon because Sheldon gave his only copy to Henry who took it to Keiko in the internment camp. Sheldon claims he is just as happy to have even the broken record but Henry wishes he could play it for him. The man in the used record shop that Henry takes it to tells him it cannot be repaired so that seems to be the end of that. Or is it?

I found it hard to believe that two people as young as Henry and Keiko in 1942 could know that they had found their love match. Even in the tumultuous times of the Second World War when people had to grow up fast it seemed to me that the declarations of love that they made to each other were unrealistic. There were a few other things that gave me pause (such as how does Henry at the age of 56 have no job responsibilities and no extra-curricular activities; also how does his son manage to find Keiko in New York City and contact her in pre-internet days on a computer). Nevertheless the historical background seems accurate and I did love the parts of the story that involved Sheldon the black saxophone player. ( )

Another great read...too tired to write much of a review but it was a fascinating look at Seattle's Japantown and the internment camps during WWII through the relationship between Henry, a 12 year old Chinese boy and Keiko, a 12 year old Japanese-American girl. ( )