The Japanese Lover

This was an interesting story. I like how the author incorporates real life historical events into their stories and I get to learn some new things. This story touched on the topic of mixed-race marriage. It is amazing how far we've come on this subject and yet how for many it is still taboo.

Bastante aburrido.
La historia salta en el tiempo pasa enseñar la historia entera de cada personaje.
A veces es muy confuso.

La historia en si no es del otro mundo tampoco y con muchos topicazos.

Lovely and prosaic. A love story both tragic and enviable. An unmistakable writing style. A novel easy to melt into for hours, as cozy as a homecoming.

Characters did not pull me in, plot all over the place and underdeveloped. Very unlike Isabel Allende

I got this book for Christmas, and while it isn't the sort of thing I'd normally pick up for myself, I ended up really enjoying it. Every time someone asked me what it was about, I had a different description because it's just about so much. The title is a bit sensational for the actual themes of aging, death, trauma, and love. Each character is a work of art in their depth and complexity. The historical aspects seem meticulously well-researched, and it while it is not necessarily a work of historical fiction, it has lots of vivid descriptions of racial and feminist issues in the 40s-60s, including Japanese internment and relocation, a topic that desperately needs more coverage as the last first-hand sources are all in their 80s and above.

If I had to narrow it down to one idea, it would be that there are many ways to love at many points in our lives, and aging is as much about loving as any other point in our lives. Familial love, passionate love, comforting love, friendship love, even loving our pets are all explored with both tenderness and pragmatism.

This is a crying novel, and I think I'd like to read it again when I'm older. I may just be too young to connect on the levels Allende is working, but I'm old enough to appreciate the beauty of this story.

I'm bilingual and I've never read Isabel Allende's books before. She writes in Spanish but I got this one in English and I gave it a try.

Usually when I read books originally written in English and then translated to Spanish, there are some sentences that sound quite weird although they make perfect sense in English. The same thing happened to me with this book. Some sentences were a little bit confusing so I ended up buying the book in Spanish -which I think was a wise decision.

Though I'd like to say that I enjoyed the book, unfortunately I didn't. With this I don't mean the book was bad, but it wasn't the best either.

The story was interesting but it was too descriptive. I'm the type who likes more ‘show-me' and less ‘tell-me'. I think it needed more dialogues too.

In conclusion, maybe in the future I'll pick one of her books again but it's going to be definitely in Spanish.

I won this book through GoodReads and I thank to the publisher for providing me this copy but this fact didn't influence the review.