Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet (2009)

"Henry looked at the paper in Keiko's hand. The bold type screamed INSTRUCTIONS TO ALL PERSONS OF JAPANESE ANCESTRY. It was all about Japanese families being forced to evacuate... Keiko touched her heart with her finger and pointed to Henry. He touched his and felt the button his family wore. "I am Chinese."

Jamie Ford's Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet centers on Henry and the love affair that begins in 1942, when he's twelve. The object of his affections is Keiko, a girl of Japanese descent with whom he forms a quick and intense bond as the only two students of color at an all-white school. At school their friendship is inevitable, as they are isolated and bullied by the rest of their peers; however, at home, the friendship is forbidden by Henry's father, a Chinese immigrant with a deep hatred for the Japanese. When Keiko and her family are taken away to an internment camp, Henry moves heaven and earth in order to remain in contact with her but, inevitably, they loose touch. A lifetime later, now a widower with a grown son, Henry learns that the possessions belonging to several Japanese families from the war years have been unearthed in the long closed Panama Hotel. On a hunch, he investigates further, looking for something that will reignite that long severed connection.

On the face of it, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet is a love story, but more than that it's a story very much concerned with issues of identity. Henry is American by birth and encouraged by his parents to be a "real" American (they go so far as to forbid him from speaking Cantonese at home so that he'll be forced to "learn his American"), even as they force him to wear a button that reads, "I Am Chinese". To his white classmates he's a foreigner and indistinguishable from the Japanese, to the other Chinese kids in his neighborhood he's a "white devil" because he goes to the white school. The only people to whom he relates in any meaningful way are Keiko and Sheldon, a black jazz musician and friend. His sense of self is in constant flux and he spends his entire life trying to balance the cultural expectations of his parents with his own desires. He cannot be his father's son and love a Japanese girl, but he cannot be whole while denying the part of himself that does love a Japanese girl. The push-pull within Henry is never really resolved (it wouldn't be realistic if it was), but it remains compelling throughout.

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet isn't a flawless novel - the plot developments aren't always quite as graceful or subtle as they might be - but it's a novel that is very emotionally resonant. Ford's strength lies in the way he develops and explores the characters. Henry, Keiko, and those who surround them, are well-drawn and their relationships complex, giving the story a weight worthy of its subject matter.