I've just finished this novel and I feel lukewarmly about it.
In 1942, Henry is a scholarship student at an all-white school in Seattle, the only student of Chinese descent; the only other non-white student, also on scholarship, is Keiko Okabe, of Japanese descent. To help offset the cost of their tuition, they both help serve lunch in the cafeteria every day. Henry's only other friend is a black street musician named Sheldon. Through Sheldon, they become acquainted with Seattle's jazz scene.
More than 40 years later, Henry has taken early retirement from Boeing to nurse his dying wife; with a lot of time on his hands, he walks past the long-shuttered Japantown landmark, the Panama Hotel, and learns that Japanese "evacuees" left family treasures in the basement when they left Seattle for internment camps and and the new owner of the Panama Hotel would like to reunite these items with the families of their original owners.
It's a very popular book club book which was why I was eager to read it. It's also a first novel, and I think it shows. There are some errors in continuity which surprise me; I find myself wondering why an editor didn't catch and correct those errors. Those errors don't really ruin the book. They're distracting, and I find myself feeling confused as a reader. I stop, and reread the paragraph, and the proceeding paragraph, and this happened several times during the book. I feel that there should be some kind of rule about the revealing of information; it needs to be linear, and told "in order."
I was bothered by some other things, too. One was that one of the characters called his Dad "Pops." I didn't know anyone called their father "Pops" except in Charlie Chan movies.
But, sometimes, the very things that are not very literary or very elegant, seem to appeal to other readers, perhaps because they have grown up on the kinds of cliches we find in films.
The story's structure, moving back and forth across forty years, is the kind of structure I find I enjoy. I know some readers find that challenging. The story consists of memories, told in the present tense, of 1942, and the "present day," which in this case is 1985. In 1942, Japanese-Americans were "evacuated" from their homes on the West Coast and interned in camps inland. The characters in this novel was interned in Montana, I believe.
I think the element that makes this story so popular with readers is that of young love. I think that is a perennially popular subject and the story could be set in any historical period and appeal to readers.
My sense is that the author is a writer who has to work very hard at avoiding cliches in storytelling and style. Nevertheless, he is obviously a writer who knows how to tell a story that is very appealing to readers.
In 1942, Henry is a scholarship student at an all-white school in Seattle, the only student of Chinese descent; the only other non-white student, also on scholarship, is Keiko Okabe, of Japanese descent. To help offset the cost of their tuition, they both help serve lunch in the cafeteria every day. Henry's only other friend is a black street musician named Sheldon. Through Sheldon, they become acquainted with Seattle's jazz scene.
More than 40 years later, Henry has taken early retirement from Boeing to nurse his dying wife; with a lot of time on his hands, he walks past the long-shuttered Japantown landmark, the Panama Hotel, and learns that Japanese "evacuees" left family treasures in the basement when they left Seattle for internment camps and and the new owner of the Panama Hotel would like to reunite these items with the families of their original owners.
It's a very popular book club book which was why I was eager to read it. It's also a first novel, and I think it shows. There are some errors in continuity which surprise me; I find myself wondering why an editor didn't catch and correct those errors. Those errors don't really ruin the book. They're distracting, and I find myself feeling confused as a reader. I stop, and reread the paragraph, and the proceeding paragraph, and this happened several times during the book. I feel that there should be some kind of rule about the revealing of information; it needs to be linear, and told "in order."
I was bothered by some other things, too. One was that one of the characters called his Dad "Pops." I didn't know anyone called their father "Pops" except in Charlie Chan movies.
But, sometimes, the very things that are not very literary or very elegant, seem to appeal to other readers, perhaps because they have grown up on the kinds of cliches we find in films.
The story's structure, moving back and forth across forty years, is the kind of structure I find I enjoy. I know some readers find that challenging. The story consists of memories, told in the present tense, of 1942, and the "present day," which in this case is 1985. In 1942, Japanese-Americans were "evacuated" from their homes on the West Coast and interned in camps inland. The characters in this novel was interned in Montana, I believe.
I think the element that makes this story so popular with readers is that of young love. I think that is a perennially popular subject and the story could be set in any historical period and appeal to readers.
My sense is that the author is a writer who has to work very hard at avoiding cliches in storytelling and style. Nevertheless, he is obviously a writer who knows how to tell a story that is very appealing to readers.
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