Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet - Review by Rebecca Woodhead
A Note to UK Publishers
As yet, this book is not available in the UK. This needs rectifying immediately. British libraries, book shops and book clubs need this novel. Schools need this novel. Children need to read this. We can't be the last land mass on the face of the planet able to rave about it.
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet - by Jamie Ford
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet is a tremendous debut novel. It deals with sensitivity with the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. At the same time, it is a Romeo and Juliet story of near misses, deception, heartbreak and yearning. The novel is based in Seattle and jumps between the 1940s and 1980s. This is a strategy that is hard to pull off without jarring but Ford manages the task admirably, illustrating the changes in the central characters without resorting to decade stereotypes.
Ford's novel is well researched but not didactic. He does not preach at you to take sides. He simply presents the characters and the facts and you are pulled in. This will be big and you'll want to be able to say you read it early. Buy two. Read one and keep the other pristine. Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet will become a classic.
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