The Japanese Lover

Isabel Allende has written a beautiful love story in her newest novel, The Japanese Lover.
Wonderful crafted with well developed main characters and a story line that spans current day and historic San Francisco and 1939 Poland.  This story spans oceans and prejudice to bring us love, trust and the beauty of happy relationships.

Alma Belasco has lived a full and all encompassing life.  Coming to the United States as a child to escape the Holocaust she grows up with her aunt and uncle in San Fransisco, CA.  The family gardeners' son, Ichimei Fukuda is her best childhood friend.  Now she is coming to end her days at Lark House, a charming eccentric nursing home.  Though she still is very independent, she resides at the nursing home and her nephew, Seth, comes to visit while he gathers information to write her memoirs.

Irina Bazili has had a troubled childhood.  To escape her past she has come to work at Lark House with the senior citizens.  She feels comfortable there, taking care of the elderly who remind her of her grandparents.  Allende uses the voice of Irina to express the feelings of one that has reached the end of life, "She tried to understand what it meant to carry winter on your back, to hesitate over every step, to confuse words you don't hear properly, to have the impression that the rest of the world is going about in a great rush: the emptiness, frailty, fatigue and indifference toward everything not directly not directly related to you...She imagined how she herself would be as an elderly and then ancient woman."

Irina and Seth forge a friendship as they gather the mementos of Alma's past and discover the history
of the Belasco family.  Through their exploration the reader learns about the Holocaust and the Japanese internment camps.  Allende writes about the horrible conditions and treatment of the Japanese as part of United States history, a topic seldom discussed, along with the prejudices of befriending or marrying people of Japanese descent at that time.  She also brings in more modern day topics such as AIDS, and sexual trafficking.

Her writing style flows with a pace that keeps the plot moving between the love stories of the past and the present.  Intermingling the history and present day controversies, Allende shows that time can heal old wounds and bring peace as we near the end of life.  She wraps up the novel with a happily ever after that is magical but the reader is so captivated that by that point will want to believe the romantic ending she writes.