Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet in Ultimate Popsugar Reading Challenge

Oct 10, 2011 jess rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011, audiobook-d, fiction

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet is the story of a young Chinese boy in 1940s Seattle who befriends a Japanese girl while scholarshipping at the local white elementary school. The book is the story of their friendship and love in spite of the tensions between Henry's traditional, Japan-hating Chinese father, but it also tells the story of Seattle at the beginning of WWII.

My favorite image of the book was Keiko’s Girl Scout troop at Camp Minidoka. I love historic Girl Scout references, es Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet is the story of a young Chinese boy in 1940s Seattle who befriends a Japanese girl while scholarshipping at the local white elementary school. The book is the story of their friendship and love in spite of the tensions between Henry's traditional, Japan-hating Chinese father, but it also tells the story of Seattle at the beginning of WWII.

My favorite image of the book was Keiko’s Girl Scout troop at Camp Minidoka. I love historic Girl Scout references, especially Girl Scouting in the face of adversity.

There was some interesting stuff in this book about race relations between all the Chinese-, Japanese- and African-Americans and the white bullies & business owners. The perspective on intergenerational relationships was also interesting; I gained something from both Henry and his father’s positions on Chinese-American culture. Henry’s friendship with Sheldon was, in contrast, an intergenerational relationship that worked. Henry’s son’s perspective was less accessible to the reader, and I kind of wanted that third generation to speak out louder. I think the author had something interesting to say about how we humans relate to each other, I'm just not certain that Hotel quite got there.

The book provides an interesting window into a shameful time that we often gloss over & ignore, but it does it in a way that makes the reader feel sad but not guilty. So, I guess it allows you to gain access to that grief and sense of injustice without becoming defensive. I think that taps into why people seem to love this book.

I hate to play the “first novel” card, but the book was a little heavy-handed with some of the points it was trying to make, e.g. reiterating so often that Keiko doesn’t even speak Japanese, while Henry knows Chinese and wears an “I am Chinese” button. There were a fair number of unbelievable “coincidences” that asked too much from my suspension of disbelief, e.g. the police car/bully chase scene, the lunch lady's moonlighting offer, and so on. Some of the dialogue was pretty stilted – I listened to the audio book, so it was even more forced. The style was perfectly adequate, but not much more than that.

This book is also imperfect in its factual accuracy. The 1940s chapters feel well-researched. WWII-era Seattle was alive for me in these pages, and I found myself reflecting on the city's history often when I was reading this book. I end up in Seattle almost weekly for family and work-related things, so this book stuck in my craw while I was reading it. The 1980s chapters, however, were an ongoing joke of factual inaccuracies. No, you did not use the internet to reconnect with a long-lost love in 1986. You did not join a grief support group on the internet in 1986. The anachronisms were a little upsetting, not because I'm such a stickler but because they made me question the factual accuracy of the WWII-era chapters as well. ...more

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Jul 24, 2019 Graceann rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fiction, pop-sugar-2019

In 1986, a long closed hotel is being remodeled, and many boxes of items are found in the basement. Among them is a parasol, and it sets our protagonist's mind back forty years to a very ugly time.

Henry was a small boy when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, thus putting into motion the US's entry into World War II, and the "relocation" of Japanese currently living in the States. Henry is Chinese, and has to wear a badge that says so in order to avoid being harassed and abused by adults; it does ...more

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Nov 23, 2013 Joanna rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: audiobooks, bookclub-grasslands, rws-2016-winter, 2016-read

This is the March selection for my neighborhood bookclub. It should make for an interesting discussion because there are a lot of important themes here. In particular, I am interested in the examination of the meaning of loyalty - to family, to country, to individuals. There is a lot of sacrifice of personal happiness in this book in the name of loyalty and obedience. While the plot and characters were sometimes a little thin, the questions raised about duty and promises kept me going and have s ...more

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