Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

Set in Seattle, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet tells the story of Henry Lee, an American of Chinese descent. We first meet Henry in 1986 when he is drawn to see why a large crowd has amassed outside the boarded up Panama Hotel in the former Japanese district of Seattle. The new owner has discovered the belongings of Japanese families who were rounded up and sent to internment camps during World War II. The owner unfurls a Japanese parasol, and Harry remembers a time when he was friends with a young Japanese girl, Keiko, who had a parasol just the same. The novel then returns Henry to the America of the 1940’s following the attack on Pearl Harbour, when to be of Asian appearance, either Chinese or Japanese, attracted insults and bullying. Distancing themselves from the Japanese who were their long time enemies, Henry’s father made him wear a button announcing to the world “I am Chinese” so there would be no misunderstanding.

The story tells of the difficult relationship that Henry had with his father who was still nationalistic to China despite living in America. Henry’s father wanted Henry to eventually return to China to complete his schooling, but also wanted Henry to be American and thus Henry was sent to the Reinier Academy when he was 12, an all–white school, on a scholarship and his parents refused to let him speak Chinese at home even though this was the only language of his parents.

It is at the Reinier Academy that Henry meets Keiko, another scholarship student, and a second generation American whose family speaks no Japanese. Despite their different backgrounds a friendship and first love develops, against the background of the jazz scene in Seattle. Unfortunately, their friendship is pulled apart as Kieko and her family are rounded up and sent to internment camps.

But the novel is not just about Henry and Kieko’s story, but also Henry’s relationship with his own son Marty, which is told as they search the basement of the Panama Hotel for something that Henry had thought lost forever.

I really enjoyed this book as this is a period of American history that is not often written about. The story flowed and I got caught up in the characters and colour of the period, and I kept turning the pages to see where their story would end. This would make a great book club book.  You might like to watch Jamie Ford talk about his book in the youtube video above.

Before I Go to Sleep, S. J. Watson

What would it be like to wake up each morning in bed with a man that you don’t remember? And to make matters worse, he appears to be married. To creep down to the bathroom trying not to wake anyone up and find the face in the mirror is not yours? Or at least not the twenty seven year old face that you remember?

This is Christine’s life after an accident has left her unable to remember anything prior to when she wakes up each morning and thus her husband, Ben, has to fill in her life story for her every day.  However, at the suggestion of Dr Nash, a doctor she is seeing without Ben’s knowledge, Christine has been keeping a diary. Dr Nash rings her each day to tell her where to find the diary and as she documents the flashbacks of memory that she experiences, she discovers that Ben is not always telling her the truth. Is Ben doing this to shield her from painful memories as he says or is there another, more sinister reason. Can Ben be trusted?

I finished this recently released psychological thriller last weekend and couldn’t put it down. The novel is told via the diary that Christine writes, and you feel so sorry for her, thankful that her memory problems are not yours. But then, there is the chilling realisation of how vulnerable Christine is as she relies on the people around her for knowledge of every aspect of her life. The setting of a suburban house, with an ordinary couple, makes the novel more compelling as it so closely resembles my own domestic situation (although with memory intact), and the constant question of whether a memory is truth or the result of a damaged brain kept me on edge, and wanting to find out what happens next.

I have to say that I had worked out the conclusion a little before the main character, but I think that this didn’t detract from the entertainment of the story. The other thing I liked about the novel is that it is well written. Often in the crime/thriller genre, the quality of the writing is overlooked with the emphasis on an author getting as many novels produced in a year as possible.  Thankfully, this is not the case with Before I Go to Sleep which made it an enjoyable read.

Past the Shallows - Favel Parrett

This is one of my favourite books so far this year. Very much in the style of Tim Winton or Craig Silvey’s Jasper Jones, the story is gorgeous, heartbreaking, engrossing, and you just wanted to take the characters home with you.

The novel is about three brothers, Joe, Miles and Harry, growing up before their time on the wild coast of Tasmania. Their mother died a few years previously in a car crash, and their father has become a bitter, heavy drinking man whose moods are mercurial as the sea on which he spends each day trying to make a living diving for abalone and crayfish.

Most of the book is told through the eyes of Miles and Harry as Joe had left home to live with his grandfather some time ago. For Miles there is no escape. Despite being in his early teens, Miles has to work on his father’s fishing boat working the air pump, cleaning the boat on its return and dealing with the cannery which he hates. Harry suffers from seasickness and so avoids the boat duties but that doesn’t mean he escapes his father’s bad temper. For Joe, this is the last school holidays he will spend with Miles and Harry for a while. His grandfather is dead and his house is being sold. At nineteen, Joe has decided to escape the small town where the family lives and where employment prospects are limited to the local cannery, to sail the boat he has built to adventure, but that doesn't mean it's an easy decision to leave his two brothers to the mercy of their father.

It all sounds very bleak but like many children who don’t have much, simple things give the boys some hope. Miles and Joe spend time surfing together and hanging out as brothers do. Harry receives a warm welcome at his best friend Stuart’s house with Stuart's mum giving him the softness missing from home, and things don’t feel so bad when Harry befriends the local recluse whom the other kids are scared of, but who listens to Harry’s problems with a sympathetic ear, and gives Harry the experiences that you get when you have a special relationship with an honorary uncle.

Life continues in this way, until one day everything changes, tragedy strikes, and a family secret is revealed.

"Little Princes" by Conor Grennan

I was drawn to reading this book after having many people recommend another book with a similar theme, Greg Mortensen’s Three Cups of Tea. I confess that I have had a fascination with the exploits of travellers in the Nepalese region ever since I did a school project on Sir Edmund Hillary’s ascent of Mount Everest but my view has always been coloured with the rose tinted glasses I seem to be wearing – the majesty of the mountains, the picturesque villages and people – as I had never visited this part of the world myself.


What I didn’t know was the recent history of the area where the civil conflict between the Maoist rebels and King of Nepal meant many Nepalese families lost their children when they were abducted by the rebel army. This is not the story of those child soldiers, but one of families so desperate to ensure the welfare of their children that they paid large sums of money to unknown people to take their children to a better life in the Kathmandu Valley which was still free from Maoist control. What they didn’t know was that once the children reached there they were abandoned by the people given the responsibility of looking after them or made to beg for food and money much like a scene from a Charles Dickins novel.

The author, Conor Grennan, was a young man who was embarking on a year long trip overseas and thought the women he met would be impressed when he said that his trip would include a period doing voluntary work with children in a developing country during a civil war. Little did he realise that his three months working in an orphanage in Kathmandu would draw him into the plight of these children who thought they were orphans, eventually returning after his trip to set up an orphanage of his own, and to try to reunite some of the children with their parents.

I couldn’t put this book down and I think everyone, including our teenage children, should read this book to appreciate the life we live here in Australia. I’m certainly going to suggest my 15 year old, who visited Cambodia and Laos with school last year, gives it a try.

The Lotus Eaters by Tatjana Soli

They say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, and in the case of The Lotus Eaters this is certainly the case. I initially assumed that it was one of those chick lit type romances as the cover had a picture of a women in Western clothing with a red flower in her hair, and the plug “tremendously evocative, a love story set in the hallucinatory atmosphere of war”. It wasn’t until I saw the book listed on the New York Times “100 Notable Books” list that I thought I should give it a go.

At the opening of the book it is 1975 and we meet Helen, a photographer who has made a name for herself covering the Vietnam war over the last 10 years but work is thin on the ground these days as the American public no longer seems to care about the war. The Americans are being evacuated from Saigon but Helen cannot bring herself to leave with her injured Vietnamese husband, Linh, wanting to remain for that last story, the one that will bring the devastation and suffering home to Americans for the last time. The novel then takes us back to the beginning when Helen arrives in Saigon as a green, 22 year old college dropout, who wants to go where her father and brother went and gave their lives – to the battle zone.
 
What follows is her story. Rejecting a desk job, she strives to follow the troops into the field capturing the real war and learning from veteran photographer Darrow who becomes her lover. Darrow is the epitome of a wartime correspondent. A Pulitzer prize winner, he has covered so many conflicts that he is jaded with the war and hankers to cover the beauty in the country he finds himself in, but like an addict, can’t give up the fix of getting “the” photo, and thus keeps pushing himself into more dangerous situations. Ultimately he pays the price, leaving Linh to pick up the pieces of Helen’s life as they find something more normal together. However, as the years pass, Helen finds herself becoming more and more like Darrow, drawn to find the photo that will get people’s attention.

The real story of The Lotus Eaters is that of the Vietnam War. The book explores how the war changes people – the Vietnamese, the American troops and the photojournalists covering the stories amidst the beauty of the countryside that hides the danger lurking underneath. In Australia, travelling to South East Asia has become a popular holiday, so it was interesting to read about what is quite a recent event in this country’s history but one which Australians probably don’t have much appreciation of. I could also see parallels with the current conflict in Afghanistan where Australian troops are fighting and reports of fatalities seem to be more common – appearing more regularly in our newspapers

I really enjoyed this novel, so don’t be like me and make assumptions based on the cover. If you need more convincing, here’s a link to the New York Times review.

Jo Nesbo and Michael Connelly by the Pool this Summer

I’ve been revisiting the crime fiction genre over the summer holidays as a perfect escape from the weather and natural disasters that are affecting both Queensland and country.

My first was Reversal, the new novel from Michael Connelly. I had previously read The Poet and then The Scarecrow both featuring Crime Reporter Jack McEvoy and FBI Agent Rachel Walling in a traditional style whodunnit but well written and with good twists and turns. I was curious to see if the latest offering which stars LAPD Detective Harry Bosh and defence attorney Mickey Haller is similarly enjoyable.

Jason Jessup was convicted 25 years ago in a high profile child murder case, but with the advancement of DNA testing, bodily fluids on the victim’s dress have subsequently been linked to her stepfather, thus putting in doubt Jessup’s conviction. In the interests of neutrality, Mickey Haller has been asked by the District Attorney’s Office to take on the prosecution of the case, effectively changing sides and coming up against one of his colleagues in the defence community. Mickey has to come up with the evidence to put Jesse away once and for all – evidence that is 25 years old.

I still have a soft spot for this more straight forward style of the crime genre having cut my teeth on Patricia Cornwall, James Patterson, Harlan Coben, and Jeffery Deaver but in recent years I found that there was too much of the same old, same old, and the offerings by some of the writers have become a bit formulaic. In recent times, I have yet to find an American crime author that I have wanted to read another of their novels, but Michael Connelly almost fits the spot with me having read three in the last 12 months. While Connelly’s style is much more American police show than Stieg Larsson edgy, he is still well worth a read next to the pool or at the beach this summer.

The second book that I read in this genre over January has been Jo Nesbo’s Nemesis. Now this is a writer that I want to read more of. Nemesis features Detective Harry Hole to whom the English speaking world was first introduced in The Redbreast. Like many of the lead characters in Scandinavian crime fiction, Hole is a “damaged” character - in The Redbreast he is a recovering alcoholic, with little personal life and whose closest friend in the police force ends up dead during the course of the novel. In Nemesis, things are looking up for Hole – he hasn’t had a drink since the last novel, and he is in a relationship with a future with Rakel and her son Oleg. Then, Hole’s life is turned upside down.

While on a murder case that occurred during a bank robbery, Harry has to investigate the apparent suicide of an old girlfriend. Complicating this investigation is that, unknown to his colleagues, he had dinner with her the night before and arrived home with no recollection of it after apparently “falling off the wagon”. Coincidentally, the only person who can identify the robber of the bank happens to be the ex-girlfriend’s uncle, a reknown bank robber himself, currently serving time in prison. What follows is a tale of mystery, revenge, and suspense where the reader is lead first one way and then another in guessing the outcome, but ultimately has to wait until the end before all is revealed.

I’m certainly looking forward to seeing what develops in the third novel available in the series in English, The Devil’s Star.

To the End of the Land - David Grossman

I actually finished this book in December but was so busy with Christmas sales at the shop, I’ve only just managed to sit down and think about my reaction to it. I initially was drawn to the idea of someone believing that they could “will” something into not happening. Then, I became immersed in the story of a country which has been living in a war zone one way or another since 1948, told via the experiences of the book’s three main characters, Ora, Avram, and Ilan.


We first meet Ora, Avarm and Ilan as teenagers in a hospital in Israel during wartime in 1967, forging a friendship that would be tested and found wanting as the three friends undertake their compulsory military service during the conflict between Egypt and Israel in the 1970’s. Next we are taken to present day, this time the war is with Palestine and history is repeating itself with the new generation as Ora’s younger son, Ofer, signs up to extend his military service and Ora is alone with her fears for Ofer's safety, having recently separated from her husband, Ilan and who has taken their older son to South America on holiday.


Ora’s decision to undertake the hike she had planned to do with Ofer but to take the reclusive Avram with her instead, sets the scene for each character’s story to unfold. As they walk along the track with its picturesque scenery and tourist sights, Ora tries to “will” Ofer to stay alive by bringing him to his biological father who has hidden from the world after the torture he experienced as a prisoner of war, including the son who was conceived between friends so many years ago. We get a glimpse of how war changes a person as the gentle boy that Ora describes becomes a man who is anaesthetised to the violence of war. We get to know the strain that Ilan and Avram’s war experiences placed on Ilan and Ora’s relationship as young parents, but for me the hardest part of the novel to read are the scenes of Avram and Ilan as soldiers and friends in the conflict with Egypt, the strength of their friendship, and the horrors inflicted on Avram as a prisoner of war.


I found this a very moving novel, with lots of food for thought, and it did make me think how lucky I am to live in Australia where military service is one of choice rather than government decree and where conflict is many thousands of miles away and not on our doorstep. Sadly, David Grossman writes from first hand experience as he explains in a postscript to the novel that he lost his own son at the end of his son’s service in the Israeli military.


Some other reviews you might like to visit can be found here and here.