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Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet: A Novel

“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.

Rating: (out of 322 reviews)

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#1 written by Critical Mind 1 year ago

Review by Critical Mind for Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet: A Novel
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Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet is a stunning debut novel of simple romance and innocence set in the tremulous and war-torn period of World War II America.

Henry is young boy trying to finding his identity amongst 1940′s racially segregated Seattle. Caught up between his nationalistic Chinese father and an America reeling from the throes of Pearl Harbor, Henry is neither American enough at his all white school, nor Chinese enough in his native community. When he meets Keiko, a second generation Japanese-American girl, generations-old suspicion blossoms into an unlikely friendship, then, love. As the war continues and Japanese prejudice deepens, Henry must watch helplessly as Japanese families including Keiko’s are rooted from their homes and forced into interment camps. ‘Hotel’ begins forty years later, as Henry is confronted with painful memories when the long forgotten belongings of 37 Japanese families are discovered in Panama Hotel’s basement.

Hotel is magnificent. Ford has the powers of a literary courtesan, yet cherishes his reader, brushing away the inevitable realism that has dulled the modern day heart. Ford reminds us, no, convinces us of true, simple love as he paints the canvas of our minds with precise delicacy and vivid grace. Pacing and flashbacks are effortlessly balanced and Ford is pitch perfect with his cultural tones. Hotel renders us raw and vulnerable but we finish the book transformed, yearning for an innocence long discarded as fallacious.

Hotel should be classified an emotional hazard. Readers will be touched, teetering between joy and heartbreak; shed tears both bitter and sweet. The next edition should come with a complementary tissue packet and I.V. unit to prevent dehydration. Bravo!

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#2 written by Mara Zonderman 1 year ago

Review by Mara Zonderman for Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet: A Novel
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I love a story told from a surprising point of view. This one deals with Japanese families who were “evacuated” after in 1942 from the West Coast. Except the story is told by 12-year-old Henry, the son of Chinese immigrants. An American himself, Henry’s father is an ardent Chinese nationalist who hates the Japanese not for the bombing of Pearl Harbor, but for their invasion of mainland China. Even a whiff of anything Japanese is forbidden in the house, so Henry has more than one big problem when he befriends and eventually falls in love with Keiko, whose family is inevitably evacuated to a camp in Idaho.

Unfortunately, this story needed a more polished teller. Ford flips his story back and forth from 1942, when Henry is 12, to 1986, when Henry is 56. Ordinarily, this is a great way to tell a story about what happened “back then” and how it has effected the present. But Henry’s voice is just the same from the time he’s 12 to the time he’s 56, making his thoughts and feelings as a child more than a little unbelievable. Keiko also seems to have far too much perspective on what’s happening to her family and in the world.

Added to that are the incredible anachronisms scattered throughout the book. Henry’s son belongs to an online support group in 1986? The nursing home has a rear-projection TV? An editor should have picked up on these things. Admittedly, I got the book as an advance copy, so perhaps by the time the book is actually published some of these mistakes will have been fixed. At least I hope so, because they are so jarring as to make it difficult to get any actual enjoyment from this book.

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#3 written by Vesta Irene 1 year ago

Review by Vesta Irene for Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet: A Novel
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This story opens in 1986 in Seattle with fifty-six-year-old Chinese American Henry Lee walking past the old Panama Hotel, where he sees that the new owners are bringing out some things they’ve discovered in the basement. Among them he sees a Japanese parasol that once belonged to a girl named Keiko, someone he cared very deeply about. These are things Japanese families had to leave behind when they were taken away to America’s concentration camps forty years earlier, during the Second World War.

Henry has been searching for a very rare and long out of print jazz record that a friend had recorded back in Nineteen and Forty-Two, when Henry was twelve years old. These things are from another time, but it’s a time Henry has not forgotten.

In 1942 Henry was the only Chinese student in an all white school. The kids tormented him, because he looked Japanese and we were at war. His father, a man who loathed everything Japanese, made a button for Henry that said, “I am Chinese.” It was embarrassing. He was bullied at school. The first day they stole his lunch, so everyday thereafter he gave his lunch to a street playing black jazz saxophonist, named Sheldon. A man he’d be friends with forever.

Henry works at in the school cafeteria, serving the white kids. One day a new person, Keiko Okabe, is there working with him. She’s Japanese and a new student in the school. They form an instant friendship. They’re only twelve, but they know the hazards their friendship can cause, still they risk it.

Henry introduces Keiko to Sheldon and one day they go to an alley outside a club where Sheldon is playing with Jazzman Oscar Holden. Holden sees them, invites them in and dedicates a song to them, which he later records. This is the record Henry spends four decades looking for, the record he hopes is in that basement, for it is their song, his and Keiko’s.

Keiko bought him the record, but he couldn’t take it home, because in addition to hating the Japanese, Henry’s father hates Jazz. He’s a stern guy, Henry’s father. So when Keiko and her family are taken to a camp, for their own protection, the record, along with Keiko, is lost to Henry. He is able to visit her and he gets his first kiss and they promise to write and he promises to wait. But he’s only thirteen now and when her letters stop coming, he moves on, meets a postal worker named Ethel, who is Chinese, much to his father’s delight. And they marry.

Forty years later, six months before Henry sees Keiko’s parasol at the Panama Hotel, Ethel dies of lung cancer. Can Henry make things right? Can he fix his life? Is that record in that basement? Can he find Keiko again? Should he? These are all questions that kept me turning the pages of this bittersweet coming of age story. Young love, it’s the finest thing there is.

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#4 written by Pippa Lee 1 year ago

Review by Pippa Lee for Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet: A Novel
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As I wipe my teary eyes, I am amazed at the extraordinary journey I have just experienced reading Jamie Ford’s “Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet.”

The hotel is the Panama Hotel, an old dilapidated landmark in Seattle. It’s 1986 and 56-year-old Henry Lee is among the onlookers who witness the unveiling of recently discovered belongings left in the basement of the hotel by Japanese families in the 1940s. To Henry, however, the trunks, suitcases and crates and their contents are not just mere curiosities or historical artifacts. For him, they bring remembrances of the World War II years, of being twelve years old and trying to fit in an all-white school while following Chinese cultural traditions at home; of being Asian and his father’s dread that he would be confused with the enemy, the Japanese. Most importantly, they bring back memories of a special friendship with Keiko, the only other kid of Asian ethnicity in school.

As Ford deftly switches the narrative from 1986 to the 1940s and vice versa, the readers are taken through a remarkable story that is both sweet and poignant. For me, it brought history to life. All too often we forget that behind the numbers, there were individuals and lives that were deeply affected by the fear, the uncertainty and the hatred. I confess that there were many moments that I was on the verge of tears, such as when young Henry looks on Japanese American families burning their personal belongings for fear that they would be accused of cooperating with Japan or when Keiko and Henry witness the “evacuation” of Bainbridge Island. I also felt moved by Henry, the adult, who is still reeling from the death of his wife. His inability to emotionally connect with his own son, and his struggle to find his own identity as both American and Chinese are familiar to me as I’m too the daughter of Chinese immigrants.

Ford’s novel is a story with many layers. But I was most impressed and touched by the author’s honest and unflinching portrayal of the sentiments that pervaded the years after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Sentiments that led to acts and events that we would rather trivialized or forget today. The fact that they were acted out not only by adults but also by children made them more painful to read about.

I highly recommend this novel to those who remember their first love, have heard about the Japanese American internment camps, or strive to bridge two cultural worlds and to those who just love a good story. To all of you, there is a room waiting at the “Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet.”

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#5 written by L. K. Messner 1 year ago

Review by L. K. Messner for Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet: A Novel
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I was excited to read this book because I knew it was set in Seattle during the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, and that’s a time period that has always interested me. I expected an interesting trip through history, but what I got was so, so much more than that.

Henry Lee is still mourning the death of his wife when he learns that the belongings of Japanese Americans hidden in the basement of Seattle’s Panama Hotel for decades have been discovered. Henry is drawn to the basement, and what he’s searching for there opens a door he thought he had closed forever. The story switches back and forth between 1986 and the 1940s, when a 12-year-old Henry attending an American school (he’s “scholarshipping” as his father likes to say) meets another international student working in the school kitchen. Keiko is Japanese American, the enemy according to Henry’s father, but the two become best friends before her family is imprisoned in one of the relocation camps.

This book does a phenomenal job exploring the history and attitudes of this time period, and Ford’s portrayal of Seattle’s ethnic neighborhoods is amazing. But really, the thing that pulled me into this novel the most was the richness of the relationships — Henry and Keiko, Henry and his father, Henry’s mother and his father, and Henry and his own son. HOTEL ON THE CORNER OF BITTER AND SWEET looks at the best and worst of human relationships, the way we regard others, the way we find ourselves reenacting our relationships with our parents with our own children, the choices we make along the way. Mostly, though, this book reminds us that there is always room — and time — for forgiveness and redemption.

I finished this book in tears, moved by the people who came to life so vividly in this story and sad that it had to end at all. HOTEL ON THE CORNER OF BITTER AND SWEET is a perfect, perfect choice for book clubs or for anyone craving a compelling story about human nature at its worst and at its best. An amazing, amazing book. It will be one of your favorites, I can almost promise.

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