Jamie Ford's book about the love that develops between a young Chinese boy, Henry, and a young Japanese girl captured my heart at first but then disappointed. I loved the idea of a middle-aged man witnessing a Japanese family's belongings being pulled from the basement of an old hotel. This was 1986. He looks back to a time forty years earlier when this family was yanked from his life and sent to an internment camp.
Eighty pages into the book, my disappointment began to grow. First, there are too many editing errors, blatant ones. A note to the author: There was no accessible Internet in 1986, and Brandon Lee was not dead in 1986! Second, the writing was not impressive; it felt like a YA book more than an adult one. Third, the characters seemed flat and unbelievable. Twelve-year-olds who speak and act like forty-year-olds are not convincing. Finally, the book was repetitive and the ending too predictable.
Overall, I'm not bummed I read the book because it did include an interesting look into a sad time in our nation's history, but I wouldn't pass it along to a friend.
