The Japanese Lover

I've only read two of Isabel Allende's books, but I've already come to expect a lot from her as an author. Those two books were so good, amazingly structured and filled with fully-realized characters. I loved everyone from the protagonists to the third-string characters. Even the characters I didn't like felt like complete people, which complicated my feelings in wonderful ways.

And The Japanese Lover didn't quite measure up. I think part of it may be that she was working with a different translator. There were glimpses of the lyrical language I'd become accustomed to, but they were few and far between. But it was more than that.

This book felt unfinished. It wandered and jumped didn't flow as well as I wanted it to. It tried a bit too hard to be hip to current culture in the modern-day sections (perhaps Allende should stick to historical fiction?). It felt like whole chapters were missing, chapters that would make me care more about these characters and help me understand the connection between them.

It's not that the book was bad, really. The romance was lovely, if a little unorthodox. But some of the backstory was a but too tragic with no real justification for all the suffering. Maybe it could have worked with stronger writing, but the child pornography just seemed out of place in a book that was trying to be more about the Japanese concentration camps during WWII. There was just a disconnect that kept this book from being great. And after the greatness of her other books, it was more disappointing that it ought to have been.

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