Review - Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
by: Jamie Ford

Hardcover: 304 pages
Publisher: Ballantine Books (January 27, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0345505336
ISBN-13: 978-0345505330
Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet is a captivatingly seductive novel of real life. As the author merges the past (1940's) with the present (1986), through the main character of Henry Lee, the reader is taken on a journey that will not soon be forgotten - a journey of the heart.

During the 1940’s, Henry is a young man of twelve. He is Chinese and sent to a school of mainly “white” children. As you can imagine, this does not bode well for young Henry. It is not long before another little girl comes to the same school “scholarshipping” along side Henry. However, this little girl is Japanese American and during the war torn time of the 1940’s, the Japanese are one of the most hated and unwelcome of people. This does not stop Henry and Keiko from becoming the best of friends and forming a unique bond of soul. They enjoy their time together until one unimaginable day when Keiko and her family are imprisoned in one of the relocation camps. Relics of their life, as well as the lives of the others that were also living hidden in the basement of the Seattle’s Panama Hotel, are left behind and forgotten until years later. It is when a new owner takes over the Hotel in 1986 that the long forgotten items are discovered, spiraling Henry back to the past and his cherished memories of Keiko.

Through this astounding debut novel, the author manages to blend an unforgettable tale of history, deep friendship, anger and forgiveness. Our world is no where near perfect and people are much to quick to judge; leaving even the most innocent to suffer.

To me, the writing style of Jamie Ford, in Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet is reminiscent of The Five People You Meet In Heaven by Mitch Albom. These are stories of real people, suffering real perils and learning unforgettable lessons. I truly feel that Jamie Ford has a memorable voice and a true gift to bring to life stories that everyone should read and discover.

*overall rating 4.5/5

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

About Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet:

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.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Excerpt:

The Panama Hotel (1986)

Old Henry Lee stood transfixed by all the commotion at the Panama Hotel. What had started as a crowd of curious onlookers eyeballing a television news crew had now swollen into a polite mob of shoppers, tourists, and a few punk-looking street kids, all wondering what the big deal was. In the middle of the crowd stood Henry, shopping bags hanging at his side. He felt as if he were waking from a long forgotten dream. A dream he’d once had as a little boy.

The old Seattle landmark was a place he’d visited twice in his lifetime. First when he was only twelve years old, way back in 1942—“the war years” he liked to call them. Even then the old bachelor hotel had stood as a gateway between Seattle’s Chinatown and Nihonmachi, Japantown. Two outposts of an old-world conflict—where Chinese and Japanese immigrants rarely spoke to one another, while their American-born children often played kick the can in the streets together. The hotel had always been a perfect landmark. A perfect meeting place—where he’d once met the love of his life.

The second time was today. It was 1986, what, forty-plus years later? He’d stopped counting the years as they slipped into memory. After all, he’d spent a lifetime between these bookended visits. A marriage. The birth of an ungrateful son. Cancer, and a burial. He missed his wife, Ethel. She’d been gone six months now. But he didn’t miss her as much as you’d think, as bad as that might sound. It was more like quiet relief really. Her health had been bad—no, worse than bad. The cancer in her bones had been downright crippling, to both of us, he thought.

For the last seven years Henry had fed her, bathed her, helped her to the bathroom when she needed to go, and back again when she was all through. He took care of her night and day, 24/7 as they say these days. Marty, his son, thought his mother should have been put in a home, but Henry would have none of it. “Not in my lifetime,” Henry said, resisting. Not just because he was Chinese (though that was a part of his resistance). The Confucian ideal of filial piety—respect and reverence for one’s parents—was a cultural relic not easily discarded by Henry’s generation. He’d been raised to care for loved ones, personally, and to put someone in a home was unacceptable. What his son, Marty, never fully understood was that deep down there was an Ethel-shaped hole in Henry’s life, and without her, all he felt was the draft of loneliness, cold and sharp, the years slipping away like blood from a wound that never heals.

Now she was gone for good. She needed to be buried, Henry thought, the traditional Chinese way, with food offerings, longevity blankets, and prayer ceremonies lasting several days—despite Marty’s fit about cremating her. He was so modern. He’d been seeing a counselor and dealing with his mother’s death through an online support group, whatever that was. Going online sounded like talking to no one, which Henry had some firsthand experience in—in real life. It was lonely. Almost as lonely as Lake View Cemetery, where he’d buried Ethel. She now had a gorgeous view of Lake Washington, and was interred with Seattle’s other Chinese notables, like Bruce Lee and his own son, Brandon. But in the end, each of them occupied a solitary grave. Alone forever. It didn’t matter who your neighbors were. They didn’t talk back.

When night fell, and it did, Henry chatted with his wife, asking her how her day was. She never replied, of course. “I’m not crazy or anything,” Henry would say to no one, “just open-minded. You never know who’s listening.” Then he’d busy himself pruning his Chinese palm or evergreen—houseplants whose brown leaves confessed his months of neglect. But now he had time once again. Time to care for something that would grow stronger for a change.

(Click here) to continue reading this excerpt.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

About Jamie Ford:

Career-wise, Jamie went to art school in Seattle to become an illustrator, and ended up an art director/copywriter. He's won an embarrassingly large amount of meaningless awards including 400+ Addys, 7 Best-of-Shows, and his work has appeared in Adweek, Advertising Age, Graphis and Communication Arts. He also had a commercial appear on an episode of The U.K.'s Funniest Commercials inspired by an embarrassing incident with a bidet that he'd rather not go into right now.

On the writerly side, he won the 2006 Clarity of Night Short Fiction Contest, was First Runner-Up in the 2006 Midnight Road Reader's Choice Awards and was a Top-25 finalist in Glimmer Train's Fall 2006 Short Story Award For New Writers. He's been published in The Picolata Review, and his fiction is online at Flashing in the Gutters and Fictional Musings. He's also an alumnus of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers and a survivor of Orson Scott Card's Literary Bootcamp.

Jamie's debut novel, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet will be released by Ballantine--January 27, 2009.

On the personal side, he's the proud father of two boys and two girls. Yep, it's chaos, but the good kind of chaos.

For more information about the author or his work, please visit http://www.jamieford.com/

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Win Prizes!

HOTEL ON THE CORNER OF BITTER AND SWEET VIRTUAL BLOG TOUR '09 will officially begin on May 1 and end on May 29. You can visit Jamie's blog stops at http://www.virtualbooktours.wordpress.com/ in May to find out more about this great book and talented author!

As a special promotion for all our authors, Pump Up Your Book Promotion is giving away a FREE virtual book tour to a published author or a $50 Amazon gift certificate to those not published who comments on our authors' blog stops. More prizes will be announced as they become available.