{"id":660,"date":"2010-04-24T14:24:20","date_gmt":"2010-04-24T19:24:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wilsonld.com\/weblog\/?p=660"},"modified":"2015-06-04T21:52:02","modified_gmt":"2015-06-05T03:52:02","slug":"hotel-on-the-corner-of-bitter-and-sweet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/?p=660","title":{"rendered":"Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>by Jamie Ford, 2009, Ballantine Books Trade Paperbacks, New York<\/p>\n<p>This book is a good story about childhood sweethearts (one Chinese, the other Japanese) in Seattle during World War II and afterwards.\u00c2\u00a0 The story focuses on the Japanese internment and it&#8217;s affects on the relationship between the two individuals and those around them.<\/p>\n<p>The story is tinged with sadness and nostalgia by the primary character, Henry for his Japanese friend, Kieko.\u00c2\u00a0 While the novel is good, it seems to drag a bit in places and the characters don&#8217;t become as alive as they could have.\u00c2\u00a0 One negaative\u00c2\u00a0aspect that I noticed is that the author overuses physical traits of his characters.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Examples are his constant references to Mrs. Beatty&#8217;s cigarette and\u00c2\u00a0Keiko&#8217;s &#8220;beautiful, chestnut brown eyes&#8221;.\u00c2\u00a0 While these physical traits may be endearing and tell us something about the characters, their overuse begins to detract.\u00c2\u00a0 I was somewhat reminded of Jan Karon&#8217;s use of this technique in her Mitford series when describing Father Tim&#8217;s girlfriend Cynthia&#8217;s trait of tilting her head to one side as she talked.\u00c2\u00a0 It was endearing at first but by the end of the book, it was really annoying.\u00c2\u00a0 Contrast this technique\u00c2\u00a0to the example of\u00c2\u00a0Harper Lee&#8217;s <em>To Kill a Mockingbird<\/em> where the characters\u00c2\u00a0are defined so well simply\u00c2\u00a0by the dialogue and their actions.\u00c2\u00a0 An example of using this technique much\u00c2\u00a0more effectively, however,\u00c2\u00a0might be\u00c2\u00a0<em>The Caine Mutiny<\/em>, where\u00c2\u00a0Captain Queeg\u00c2\u00a0began shaking the steel ball bearings in his hand\u00c2\u00a0whenever he began\u00c2\u00a0to evidence his paranoia.<em>\u00c2\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p>As I mentioned, a good\u00c2\u00a0 book, but\u00c2\u00a0somewhat flawed.\u00c2\u00a0<img decoding=\"async\" title=\"3 stars\" src=\"https:\/\/www.wilsonld.com\/weblog\/wp-includes\/images\/stars-3-0.gif\" alt=\"3 stars\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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.\u00c2\u00a0 The story focuses on the Japanese internment and <span class=\"excerpt-dots\">&hellip;<\/span> <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/?p=660\"><span class=\"more-msg\">Continue reading &rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[15],"class_list":["post-660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=660"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":666,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660\/revisions\/666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}