What I Read This Week

Image by Horia Varlan via Flickr

I read two books this past week (don’t judge – I’d read 6 if I had the time and didn’t have this stinking family I have to pay attention to).

The first book was “Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet” by Jamie Ford.  I had been recommended it so I reserved it at the library, and when I went to pick it up there were huge signs all over the place for this book.  Apparently it’s THE book to read right now.

It takes place in Seattle, Washington, and it’s primarily about a first-generation Chinese-American man/boy, Henry.  The book goes back and forth between 1946 when he was twelve and 1986 when he was 52.

In 1946 Henry’s parents put him into an all-white school where he was on ‘scholarship,’ working in the cafeteria to pay his way.  Also on scholarship at the same school was a Japanese girl Henry’s age, Keiko.  This book tells the story of the evolving friendship between Henry and Keiko, who along with her family is eventually forced to get rid of all of their worldly goods when they are sent to a internment camp along with thousands of other Japanese-Americans during World War II, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

In the 1986 portion of the book Henry is a recent widower, who took care of his adored wife, Ethel, who took years to succumb to her lung cancer.  Together, they had a son who Marty, who is finishing up college, and the book also compares the relationship Henry has with his son versus the relationship he had with his own father when he was young, who was determined to Americanize Henry, not even allowing him to speak his own native Chinese – the only language Henry’s parents understood.

This was a good book, but not great for me, because the subject matter was sad and frustrating and I felt a little shame about what the Americans did to the Japanese during the war.  Being of Jewish heritage and knowing a family friend who was in a concentration camp I can’t help but compare the two events.  The character Keiko in this book was a second-generation Japanese-American.  Her family had nothing to do with the attack at Pearl Harbor, but still she was tormented by American children and her family were forced to pack up all of their belongings and move from their home, bringing only the bare minimum of important items with them to the internment camp in another state altogether.

While I admit I had a hard time putting the book down at times I wasn’t riveted, and I still felt sad reading it and the sadness didn’t go away at the end of the book.  I would still pass the book on to a friend, had it been mine, but I wouldn’t pass in on say, “Ooooh you MUST read this.”

The second book I read, which I started and finished in one day, was “The Weight of Silence” by Heather Gudenkauf.  This is the second book I have read of Heather’s, and it was definitely a ‘can’t put down.’  This is the story of two little girls, 7-year-old best friends, who both go missing in the middle of the night.  One girl, Calli, is a select mute.  At the age of 4 she suffered an emotional trauma and has never spoken a word since.  Her best friend Petra understands her more than anyone else in the world and does her speaking for her, never once trying to get her to use her actual words, unlike seemingly everyone else in Calli’s life.  Calli and Petra have very different familial backgrounds, both of which contribute to the story.

The book is told from the perspective of several important characters, sometimes in first person and other times in third person, and I could NOT put the book down from the beginning until the end – much to the dismay of my blessed family.

Until the very end, I was kept guessing about who did what, constantly flipping back and forth between different ‘suspects.’  If I owned this book instead of the library, I would pass it on immediately as a must-read.  It isn’t a happy story either, but then again mysteries often aren’t.