by Jamie Ford, 2009, Ballantine Books Trade Paperbacks, New York

This book is a good story about childhood sweethearts (one Chinese, the other Japanese) in Seattle during World War II and afterwards.  The story focuses on the Japanese internment and it’s affects on the relationship between the two individuals and those around them.

The story is tinged with sadness and nostalgia by the primary character, Henry for his Japanese friend, Kieko.  While the novel is good, it seems to drag a bit in places and the characters don’t become as alive as they could have.  One negaative aspect that I noticed is that the author overuses physical traits of his characters.  Examples are his constant references to Mrs. Beatty’s cigarette and Keiko’s “beautiful, chestnut brown eyes”.  While these physical traits may be endearing and tell us something about the characters, their overuse begins to detract.  I was somewhat reminded of Jan Karon’s use of this technique in her Mitford series when describing Father Tim’s girlfriend Cynthia’s trait of tilting her head to one side as she talked.  It was endearing at first but by the end of the book, it was really annoying.  Contrast this technique to the example of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird where the characters are defined so well simply by the dialogue and their actions.  An example of using this technique much more effectively, however, might be The Caine Mutiny, where Captain Queeg began shaking the steel ball bearings in his hand whenever he began to evidence his paranoia. 

As I mentioned, a good  book, but somewhat flawed.