Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet: The international bestseller and word-of-mouth sensation

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The characters are skilfully drawn and the way the book is set out in its chapters, flitting from present time to time in the past when Henry and Keiko first meet when they are at school, both having been sent to a prestigious private school, but they are the only Chinese and Japanese pupils within. After Keiko and her family were evacuated to the internment camps, she and Henry could only hope that their promise to each other would be kept. The universal themes in Ford’s novel, told in a fresh way and set during a reprehensible episode in American history, are as relevant today as they were in 1942. Henry Lee was portrayed as such a lovely man and it was his character which made the book so endearing.

Good Book Guide 'This is a moving, heart-rending story - to steal from the book’s title, bittersweet really does describe this tale. While it was true that there was a fear of Japanese on the west coast, the same applied to others of Axis descent. Henry is a really lovable character, who tries his best to maintain his friendship despite his father’s deep displeasure and the separation caused by the internment. Published in 2009, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet is a tale of first love and loss (hence the sweetness and the bitterness), revolving around a Chinese American boy named Henry Lee who grows up in the midst of World War II and falls in love with a Japanese American girl named Keiko Okabe.While my memory of the time is going to be different than that of a 50 year old character, I wound up being very tired of the repeated anachronisms. Ford provides an intimate look at life on the homefront during WWII from the uncommon perpective of an earnest Chinese-American boy and his Japanese-American school friend. It’s about a guy who meets a girl, falls in love with a girl, loses a girl to the Japanese internment and his father’s racism, and moves on to be a good husband to a different woman. The real event is the discovery in the Panama Hotel of the belongings of some of the Japanese families living in Seattle, who were sent to the camps.

It is told in two different time periods, and flows back and forth between the 1940's to 1986 seemlessly. After years of getting comments and feedback on this review, I will take the time to edit it for two important details. I was really looking forward to this book because it was about a period of US history in World War 2 involving the detention of US citizens of Japanese background which I knew very little about and was looking forward to this read.Further, in that same paragraph, he tells us the main character's deceased wife is buried in the same cemetary with Bruce and Brandon Lee--and this is seven years before Brandon's death. Henry Lee was born in and lived his entire life in Seattle, Washington State, in America to immigrant Chinese parents. Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet' is a love story of many things - Seattle, families and people in cultural transition, letting go of beloved traditions, an innocent romance between a boy and a girl - while it also quietly reflects on the failures and stresses behind 'multiculturalism'.

They put up with the bullying and when their friendship becomes stronger, Henry has to put up with being accused of fraternising with the enemy. When Henry asks Marty and Samantha to meet him for tea at the Panama Hotel, this is where they end up. Naturally, Henry and Keiko become close friends despite the racial animosity between the Chinese and Japanese. I’ve met Fred Korematsu, whose challenge to internship went all the way to the Supreme Court back in the day.How could they sit back and do nothing when this many people were being taken away – when they could be next? The only thing I didn't like was that Henry was portrayed as an 80 year old while he was only 56 in the story. There are some diamonds in the rough, though: the historical aspects of the novel are very interesting; the relationships depicted in the book, while not always believable, are complex; and, the issues related to cultural identity and racial discrimination in the States during WWII are very well detailed. Set in Seattle, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet tells of the forbidden friendship between a Chinese-American boy named Henry Lee and a Japanese-American girl named Keiko Okabe during the Second World War.

Everyone encounters this big old war in history books or during classroom lectures, but we don't often think about how warfare actually affects the lives of everyday people, particularly those living outside the line of fire.She makes it her mission to match cusomers with the special something that they are missing, a talisman to bring them what their heart desires.