The Japanese Lover --by Isabel Allende

 Fiction / magical realism / love / historical

Atria Books; Reprint edition

November 3, 2015

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00URY5CE8

8014 KB

ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1501116991

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1501116995

336 pages (paperback)

$10.84 paperback

$12.99 Kindle

5 Stars

 

 

This is a story of love, both requited and unrequited. It’s a complex novel of a young Jewish girl, sent to live with relatives in San Francisco as her native Poland falls to the Nazi’s. She’s frightened, alone, and extremely bright. She becomes the apple of her uncle’s eye. And as a child meets the son of the Japanese gardener. They become fast friends, and when sent to the concentration camps, they correspond. His letters to her are highly censored, so he uses his talent of drawing to send her pictures, which she can interpret.

 

Allende follows the protagonist not just through her life, but also through the political times she lives through. We meet her late husband, and several of her friends both long-standing and new. This book deals with complex characters and complex forms of love and romance, and is a beautiful book with a satisfactory ending. I needed a tissue when her husband died. (Can I get involved in a good story? indeed I can!)

 

I truly enjoy living in Allende’s universes. She has never let me down.