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From New York Times bestselling author Isabel Allende, “a magical and sweeping” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) love story and multigenerational epic that stretches from San Francisco in the present-day to Poland and the United States during World War II.
In 1939, as Poland falls under the shadow of the Nazis, young Alma Belasco’s parents send her away to live in safety with an aunt and uncle in their opulent mansion in San Francisco. There, as the rest of the world goes to war, she encounters Ichimei Fukuda, the quiet and gentle son of the family’s Japanese gardener. Unnoticed by those around them, a tender love affair begins to blossom. Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the two are cruelly pulled apart as Ichimei and his family—like thousands of other Japanese Americans—are declared enemies and forcibly relocated to internment camps run by the United States government. Throughout their lifetimes, Alma and Ichimei reunite again and again, but theirs is a love that they are forever forced to hide from the world.
Decades later, Alma is nearing the end of her long and eventful life. Irina Bazili, a care worker struggling to come to terms with her own troubled past, meets the elderly woman and her grandson, Seth, at San Francisco’s charmingly eccentric Lark House nursing home. As Irina and Seth forge a friendship, they become intrigued by a series of mysterious gifts and letters sent to Alma, eventually learning about Ichimei and this extraordinary secret passion that has endured for nearly seventy years.
Sweeping through time and spanning generations and continents, The Japanese Lover is written with the same keen understanding of her characters that Isabel Allende has been known for since her landmark first novel The House of the Spirits. The Japanese Lover is a moving tribute to the constancy of the human heart in a world of unceasing change.
- Sales Rank: #3629 in Books
- Published on: 2016-07-05
- Released on: 2016-07-05
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.25" h x .90" w x 5.31" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 336 pages
Review
"The Japanese Lover is animated by the same lush spirit that has sold 65 million copies of her books around the world... a novel that’s a pleasure to recommend." (The Washington Post)
"Poignant, powerful ...a timeless world without 'tomorrow or yesterday.'" (Boston Globe)
"Monumental...A multi-generational epic of fate, war, and enduring love." (Harper's Bazaar)
"[A] fairy tale of a novel...As in all of Allende's fiction, we find a large, colorful cast of characters..." (New York Times Book Review)
“[Allende] is a dazzling storyteller, with a wry, sometimes dark, wit and a great eye for society's changing fashions. She may be writing a fairy tale for adults, but like the best of the genre, it's almost irresistible.” (Associated Press)
"Like the incomparable storyteller she is, Isabel Allende does not release us from the novel's spell until the last pages, with a brief but bittersweet hint of her famed magical realism." (Miami Herald)
“With The Japanese Lover, Allende reminds us that, while not everyone has a true love, we all have loves that are true. Whether they be passionate, familial, unrequited or timeless,the one constant in our lives is love. And Isabel Allende celebrates them all, beautifully.” (USA Today)
"[An] epic novel from a master of the form." (Elle)
"Allende's engrossing narrative spans 70 years of tumultuous world history, but the powerful message you'll take away is that love -- all kinds of love -- will take root and endure under the most harrowing conditions." (People Magazine, Book of the Week)
“With her engaging new novel, “The Japanese Lover,” Allende brings us a tale at once global and rooted deeply in Bay Area history, sweeping through time and across continents to explore the inner lives of two very different women in contemporary California.” (San Francisco Chronicle)
“Allende’s magical and sweeping tale focuses on two survivors of separation and loss…Befitting the unapologetically romantic soul bared here—the poignant letters to Alma from Ichimei are interspersed throughout—love is what endures.” (Publishers Weekly, starred review)
"The Japanese Lover is a poetic and profound meditation on the power of love: a common theme, sure, but in Allende's capable hands this trope is made utterly new." (Bustle)
"Themes of lasting passion, friendship, reflections in old age, and how people react to challenging circumstances all feature in Allende’s newest saga, which moves from modern San Francisco back to the traumatic WWII years. As always, her lively storytelling pulls readers into her characters’ lives immediately… the story has many heart felt moments, and readers will be lining up for it." (Booklist)
"Allende, as always, gives progress and hopeful spirits their due." (Kirkus)
"Isabel Allende's oeuvre ranges widely...but The Japanese Lover, her lushly detailed new work, may be her most expansive yet..." (Library Journal)
"Allende...delivers a poignant story of race and aging, loss and reconciliation." (San Jose Mercury News)
"[A] lovely, easy-to-read novel...Like a perfect onion, the book slowly reveals the secrets of Alma’s past, which primarily revolves around a secret, decades-long affair with a Japanese gardener." (Goop)
"The latest from the writer who's been called Gabriel Garcia Marquez's successor. It's a love story that covers a lot of ground, from Nazi-occupied Poland to present-day San Francisco. You won’t want to put it down." (theSkimm)
"...if you're a [Gabriel Garcia Marquez] fan, this one's for you." (Lauren Conrad's Top 10 Fall Reading List)
"...rich with lyrical prose and compelling plot turns. This is Allende at her very best." (Purewow.com)
"[Allende] is a dazzling storyteller, with a wry, sometimes dark, wit and a great eye for society's changing fashions. She may be writing a fairy tale for adults, but like the best of the genre, it's almost irresistible." (Times Union)
"TheJapanese Lover" erects two thematic pillars of love and prejudice toproduce a story that strikes a masterful emotional balance. More importantly,the novel crafts characters that are profoundly compelling in their complexstruggle to value love despite forces—youth and age, proximity and distance,society and self—beyond their control.” (Harvard Crimson)
“She is a dazzling storyteller,with a wry, sometimes dark, wit and a great eye for society’s changingfashions” (The National)
“Thespectre of the war and the illicit treatment of Japanese-Americans are neverlost on the reader, although Allende is too subtle a writer to do any realproselytizing. It is a beautiful and significant love story that she tells,although I was so much more interested in her than in Ichimei as a character.” (Book Reporter)
With end-of-life issues looming over Alma, “The Japanese Lover” can’t be called lighthearted. But it’s often wryly funny, and always an absorbing argument for the power of love. (St. Louis Post Dispatch)
"'Pretty brilliant,' I said once I closed the cover — literary fiction at its best.” (The Missourian)
About the Author
Born in Peru and raised in Chile, Isabel Allende is the author of a number of bestselling and critically acclaimed books, including The House of the Spirits, Eva Luna, Stories of Eva Luna, Of Love and Shadows, and Paula. Her latest novel is The Japanese Lover. Her books have been translated into more than thirty-five languages and have sold more than 65 million copies worldwide. She lives in California. Her website is IsabelAllende.com.
Excerpt. � Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
The Japanese Lover LARK HOUSE
When Irina Bazili began working at Lark House in 2010, she was twenty-three years old but already had few illusions about life. Since the age of fifteen she had drifted from one job, one town, to another. She could not have imagined she would find a perfect niche for herself in that senior residence, or that over the next three years she would come to be as happy as in her childhood, before fate took a hand. Founded in the mid-twentieth century to offer shelter with dignity to elderly persons of slender means, for some unknown reason from the beginning it had attracted left-wing intellectuals, oddballs, and second-rate artists. Lark House had undergone many changes over the years but still charged fees in line with each resident’s income, the idea being to create a certain economic and racial diversity. In practice, all the residents were white and middle class, and the only diversity was between freethinkers, spiritual searchers, social and ecological activists, nihilists, and some of the few hippies still alive in the San Francisco Bay Area.
At Irina’s first interview, the director of the community, Hans Voigt, pointed out that she was too young for a job with such responsibility, but since they had a vacancy they needed to fill urgently, she could stay until they found someone more suitable. Irina thought the same could be said of him: he looked like a chubby little boy going prematurely bald, someone who was out of his depth running an establishment of this sort. As time went by, she realized that the initial impression of Voigt could be deceiving, at a certain distance and in poor light: in fact, he was fifty-four years old and had proved himself to be an excellent administrator. Irina assured him that her lack of qualifications was more than compensated for by the experience she had of dealing with old people in her native Moldova.
Her shy smile softened the director’s heart. He forgot to ask her for a reference and instead began outlining her duties, which could be quickly summarized: to make life easier for the second- and third-level residents. Irina would not be working with anyone on the first level, because they lived independently as tenants in an apartment building. Nor would she be working with those on level four—the aptly named Paradise—because they were awaiting their transfer to heaven and spent most of the time dozing, and thus did not require the kind of assistance she was there to provide. Irina’s duties were to accompany the residents on their visits to doctors, lawyers, and accountants; to help them with their medical and tax forms; to take them on shopping expeditions; and to perform various other tasks. Her only link with the clients in Paradise, Voigt told her, would be to plan their funerals, but for that she would receive specific instructions, because the wishes of the dying did not always coincide with those of their families. Lark House residents tended to have myriad religious beliefs, which made their funerals rather complicated ecumenical affairs.
Voigt explained that only the domestic staff, the care and health assistants, were obliged to wear a uniform. There was however a tacit dress code for the rest of the employees; respect and good taste were the order of the day when it came to clothes. For example, he said emphatically, the T-shirt printed with Malcolm X’s face that Irina was wearing was definitely inappropriate. In fact it wasn’t Malcolm X but Che Guevara, but Irina didn’t tell him this because she assumed that Hans Voigt would never have heard of the guerrilla leader who fifty years after his heroic exploits was still worshipped in Cuba and by a handful of radical followers in Berkeley, where she was living. The T-shirt had cost two dollars in a used clothing store, and was almost new.
“No smoking on the premises,” the director warned her.
“I don’t smoke or drink, sir.”
“Is your health good? That’s important when you’re dealing with old people.”
“Yes.”
“Anything special I ought to know about you?”
“Well, I’m addicted to fantasy videos and novels. You know, like Tolkien, Neil Gaiman, Philip Pullman.”
“What you do in your free time is your business, young lady, just as long as you stay focused at work.”
“Of course. Listen, sir, if you give me a chance you’ll see I know how to get along with elderly people. You won’t regret it,” the young woman said with feigned self-assurance.
Once the formal interview in his office was concluded, Voigt showed her around the premises, which housed some two hundred and fifty people, with an average age of eighty-five. Lark House had once been the magnificent property of a chocolate magnate, who not only bequeathed it to the city but left a generous donation to finance its upkeep. It consisted of the main house, a pretentious mansion where the offices, communal areas, library, dining room, and workshops were situated, and a row of pleasant redwood tile buildings that fitted in well with the ten acres of grounds, which looked wild but were in fact carefully tended by a host of gardeners. The independent apartments and the buildings housing the second- and third-level residents were linked by wide, enclosed walkways, which allowed wheelchairs to circulate sheltered from the extremes of climate, but were glassed in on both sides to provide a view of nature, the best solace for the troubles of all ages. Paradise, a detached concrete building, would have looked out of place were it not for the fact it was completely overgrown with ivy. The library and games room were open day and night, the beauty salon kept flexible hours, and the workshops provided a variety of classes from painting to astrology for those who still longed for pleasant surprises in their future. The Shop of Forgotten Objects, staffed by volunteer ladies, offered for sale clothing, furniture, jewelry, and other treasures cast off by the residents, or left behind by the deceased.
“We have an excellent cinema club and show films three times a week in the library,” Voigt told her.
“What kind of films?” asked Irina, hoping they might contain vampires or science fiction.
“A committee chooses them, and they prefer crime movies, especially Tarantino. There’s a certain fascination with violence in here, but don’t worry, they’re well aware it’s fiction and that the actors will reappear safe and sound in other films. Let’s call it a safety valve. Several of our guests fantasize about killing somebody, usually a family member.”
“Me too,” said Irina without hesitation.
Thinking she must be joking, Voigt laughed indulgently. He appreciated a sense of humor almost as much as he did patience among his staff.
Squirrels and an unusually large number of deer roamed freely among the ancient trees of the grounds, Voigt explained, adding that the does gave birth to and raised their young until they could fend for themselves. The grounds also served as a bird sanctuary, above all for skylarks, whose presence there had given the facility its name: Lark House. There were several cameras strategically placed to monitor the animals in their habitat and also any residents who might wander off or suffer an accident, but Lark House had no strict security measures. By day the main gates remained open, with only a couple of unarmed guards patrolling the grounds. These two retired policemen, aged seventy and seventy-four, offered more than adequate protection, since no thief in his right mind would waste time on penniless old folks.
Voigt and Irina passed a pair of women in wheelchairs, a group carrying easels and paint boxes to an open-air art class, and several residents out exercising dogs as careworn as them. The property adjoined the bay, and when the tide came in it was possible to go kayaking, which some of the residents not yet disabled by their infirmities were happy to do. This is how I would like to live, thought Irina, taking deep breaths of the sweet aroma of pines and laurels. She couldn’t help comparing these pleasant surroundings to the sordid dives she had drifted through since the age of fifteen.
“Last but not least, Miss Bazili, I should mention the two ghosts, because I’m sure that will be the first thing our Haitian staff will tell you about.”
“I don’t believe in ghosts, Mr. Voigt.”
“Congratulations. Neither do I. The ones in Lark House are a young woman wearing a pink gauze dress, and a three-year-old child. The woman is Emily, the chocolate magnate’s daughter. Poor Emily died of grief after her son drowned in the pool at the end of the 1940s. It was then that the magnate abandoned the house and created the Lark House Foundation.”
“Did the boy drown in the pool you showed me?”
“Yes, but no one else has died there that I know of.”
Irina soon changed her mind about ghosts, realizing that Emily and her son weren’t the only resident spirits. She was to discover that many of the old folk were permanently accompanied by their dead.
Early the next morning, Irina arrived at work in her best pair of jeans and a discreet T-shirt. She quickly confirmed that the atmosphere at Lark House was relaxed without being negligent. It was more like a college than an old people’s home. The food was as good as that of any reasonable Californian restaurant, and organic as far as possible. The cleaning staff did a thorough job, and the health aides and nurses were as cheerful as could be expected under the circumstances. It took her only a few days to learn the names and quirks of her colleagues and the residents in her care. The handful of Spanish and French phrases she memorized helped win over the staff, who came almost exclusively from Mexico, Guatemala, and Haiti. Although what they earned did not correspond to the hard work they put in, very few of them went around with long faces.
“You have to spoil the grannies a bit, but always treat them with respect. The same goes for the grandpas, but you need to watch out for them, because some of them get up to mischief,” she was told by Lupita Farias, a stocky woman with the features of an Olmec statue who was head of the cleaning staff. Having worked at Lark House for thirty-two years and having access to every room, Lupita knew all the inhabitants intimately. She had learned about their lives, could see at a glance what was wrong with them, and accompanied them in their sorrows.
“Watch out for depression, Irina. That’s very common here. If you notice that somebody seems isolated or very sad, if they stay in bed or stop eating, come and find me right away, okay?”
“What do you do in those cases, Lupita?”
“It depends. I stroke them, and they always like that, because old people don’t have anyone who touches them, and I get them hooked on a TV series, because nobody wants to die before the final episode. Some of them find comfort in prayer, but there are lots of atheists here, and they don’t pray. What’s most important is not to leave them on their own. If I’m not around, go and see Cathy. She knows what to do.”
Dr. Catherine Hope, a second-level resident, had been the first person to welcome Irina on behalf of the community. At sixty-eight, she was the youngest resident. Ever since being confined to a wheelchair she had opted for the help and company that Lark House offered. She had been living there a couple of years and during that time had become the life and soul of the place.
“The elderly are the most entertaining people in the world,” she eventually told Irina. “They have lived a lot, say whatever they like, and couldn’t care less about other people’s opinion. You’ll never get bored here. Our residents are well educated, and if they’re in good health they keep on learning and experimenting. This community stimulates them and they can avoid the worst scourge of old age: loneliness.”
Irina knew from newspaper reports about the progressive spirit of the Lark House residents. There was a waiting list of several years for admission, which would have been much longer if many of the candidates had not passed away before it was their turn. The old folks in the home were conclusive proof that age, despite all its limitations, does not stop one from having fun and taking part in the hubbub of life. Several of the residents who were active members of Seniors for Peace spent their Friday mornings in street protests at the aberrations and injustices in the world, especially those committed by the American empire, for which they felt responsible. These activists, among whom was an old lady aged a hundred and one, met up in the northern corner of the square opposite the police station with their canes, walkers, and wheelchairs. They held up banners against war or global warming, while the public showed their support by honking their car horns or signing petitions that these furious elders stuck under their noses. The protesters had appeared on television on more than one occasion, while the police were made to look ridiculous as they tried to disperse them with threats of tear gas that never materialized. Clearly moved, Voigt had shown Irina a plaque in the park in honor of a ninety-six-year-old musician, who had died of a seizure with his boots on in broad daylight during a 2006 protest against the war in Iraq.
Irina had grown up in a Moldovan village that was inhabited only by old people and children. She thought of her own grandparents and, as so often in recent years, regretted having abandoned them. Lark House gave her the opportunity to give to others what she hadn’t been able to give them, and she kept this in mind as she began looking after those in her care. She soon won the residents over, including several on the first level, the independent ones.
From the start, Alma Belasco had caught her attention. She stood out from the other women thanks not only to her aristocratic bearing but to the magnetic force field that seemed to separate her from the rest of humanity. Lupita insisted that the Belasco woman did not fit in at Lark House and would not last long: any day now the same chauffeur who had brought her in a Mercedes-Benz would come and take her away again. And yet the months went by and this didn’t happen. Irina did no more than observe Alma Belasco from a distance, because Hans Voigt had instructed her to focus on people from the second and third levels, and not to get distracted by the independents. Besides, Irina had more than enough to do in looking after her own clients—they were not to be called patients—and learning the ins and outs of her new job. As part of her training, she had to study the videos of recent funerals: a Buddhist Jewish woman and a repentant agnostic. For her part, Alma Belasco would not have paid any attention to Irina if circumstances had not briefly turned the young woman into the most noteworthy member of the community.
Most helpful customer reviews
246 of 258 people found the following review helpful.
An epic romance, swiftly told, featuring an infinite series of "what ifs?"
By David Kusumoto
* I was drawn to this book's provocative title because of three reasons: 1) I'm a Japanese-American who was born in Japan; 2) my extended family was touched by racial tensions during and after World War II, including incarceration in U.S. internment camps, and, 3) my wife is not Asian (she's Hispanic). Noting the aforementioned, I requested and was approved to receive an advance review copy from the publisher - without committing to write a review.
* When it comes to matters of love and romance - why do some of us, with just one shot at life - choose safer harbors - despite being lucky enough to meet someone who's truly "the one"? When forced to think about the "one who got away" - obviously regrets are framed in higher relief as we pass 50, 60, 70 and - if we're like the Polish-American matriarch in this novel (Alma Belasco) - pass age 80 and beyond.
* Author Isabel Allende's huge base of mostly female readers - just added a male fan. "The Japanese Lover," with a few exceptions, is a wonderful read, an epic romance that stretches from 1939 to 2013. It adds a wrinkle to the interracial "forbidden love" trope - by featuring a pairing between a Caucasian woman and an Asian man - which in my view, is still far less common in the U.S. today compared to pairings between Asian women and Caucasian men.
* Despite the 74-year-long timeline, the writing and plotting in "The Japanese Lover" moves smartly and swiftly, combining historic events with an international romance that endures many credible obstacles. Readers are taken from Poland to Texas to San Francisco - as the author integrates a vast array of observations through dialogue and exposition, i.e., the desperate exodus of Jews before the Holocaust - the internment of Japanese-Americans in the U.S. - the cultural differences between peoples, East vs. West - the state of interracial relations in America, then vs. now - the life-long impacts of child pornography on its victims - the working culture inside assisted living and nursing homes - the ideology behind secret suicide planning among the terminally ill - the state of gay sub-culture before the 1970s - the politics of left vs. right in liberal San Francisco - and, most crucially to this story - the socio-economic class divisions and their relationship to women who choose mates for security and comfort - vs. women who choose mates based on romantic matters of the heart, despite their adverse impact on social status and on affluent lifestyles.
* This book may not be considered great literature, because the threads and pathways related to forbidden love are well-worn, e.g., the author invokes the familiar trick of using present day Millennials to inspire an old woman to "look back" - while proffering the suggestion that racial differences become less salient to romance as time marches on. And in terms of character development, the women in this tale fare better than the men - insofar that Ichimei ("Ichi") Fukuda - the eponymous "Japanese Lover" - feels mildly opaque compared to his enigmatic heroine, Alma Belasco. Veteran Allende fans have pointed out how and why this novel fell short compared to her earlier works, and they're not wrong.
* Yet "The Japanese Lover" - for the first-time Allende reader - is still entertaining and well-paced, capturing a love affair that feels neither cheap nor tawdry nor explicit - while sub-textually presenting grand themes about aging and how they affect the way we look at past relationships - which in turn conjures up the old ponderable - that romance might be just an infinite series of "what ifs?" - while everything else is "life as it all turned out." While some might feel let down by the ending, I loved it because - without giving it away - it suggests that self-deception among mature adults is common to preserve a euphoria - that we once felt would be as eternal as our own youth.
* In sum, past regrets and guilt gives way to resignation - and finally - to a satisfied acceptance of a life well-lived, making the most of what's given as we pass quickly through the universe. This book is a winner. Grade: A-.
120 of 127 people found the following review helpful.
This is a beautifully heartbreaking story about life, love and mistakes.
By Under The Covers Book Blog
Reviewed by Francesca and posted at Under The Covers Book Blog
THE JAPANESE LOVER is a beautiful life story about two women. One at the end of her complicated life, and one at a crossroads in the middle where she has to overcome her past. Alma Belasco, originally from Polland, came to live with her aunt and uncle in the US when she was a little girl. They gave her a lavish life catering to her every whim, raising her in a society where she never has to want for anything. During her childhood, she becomes best friends with a Japanese boy. Although life tears them apart, that friendship marks her life and throughout the years, as their relationship changes, becomes the biggest part of who she is. Friendship turns into love, turns into loss and pain.
We meet Alma when she’s an old woman living in a retirement home. Her only companions? Her grandson Seth and one of the caretakers at the home, Irina. The second woman we get to meet in this book and whose life becomes forever changed by this story. She’s young and down on her luck, having a past that tortures her every day. But it’s Alma and her story, and eventually Seth and his love, that make a big difference for Irina.
This is a beautifully heartbreaking story about life, love and mistakes. Love had, love lost. Love that can withstand the test of time. Love that can help heal. But also centers around prejudice and how it can break someone and get in the way of happiness. Although this story is a bit understated, and it starts off slower than I would’ve liked, by the time it gets going you can’t help but get lost in these characters and want to know more. I felt like a little kid waiting for grandma to tell the story of her life. Her adventures. The format in which it’s told going back and forth between past and present, was perfect to show the reader how they got here. And the ending is bittersweet. This is definitely a book that surprised me by making me shed a tear on more than one occasion because the writing was so subdued, the emotions snuck up on me.
As much as I enjoyed this book a lot, I have to admit I couldn’t help but compare it to her other work and see it fall short of my expectations. Isabel Allende is legendary in her writing and I can’t quite see this as being up there with her classics. However, if you go into it with a clear mind or if this is your first foray into her writing, I believe you won’t be disappointed with this story full of depth.
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful.
Disappointing Effort
By Patricia Hagerty
Allende must have been trading on her reputation in getting this book published. An unknown writer would never have been able to get it to print. Alma is sent to San Francisco relatives by her Jewish parents at the start of WWII. She feels abandoned and unhappy even though the wealthy relatives are very accepting of her. Eventually she is befriended by the only boy in the family, Nathaniel, whom she later marries even though she has long been in love with the son of the Japanese gardener, Ichimei. Alma was a famous artist/designer in the fashion of Vera, finding success with little apparent effort. Now she is living by choice in an idealized senior building and cared for by Irina, a Moldovan immigrant who is the victim of child pornography. Irina is loved by the building’s residents and also by Seth, Alma’s grandson; she fails to return his love because of fear that her image will be recognized by those in her new life. Through flashbacks we learn of the complex backgrounds of all the characters, but (English teacher talk here) it is all TELLING. Long passages summarize well-known 20th century history and stereotype individuals. Characters serve to represent issues but fail to come alive: Alma’s illegal abortion, Irina’s victtimhood, Ichimei’s family’s experience in American concentration camps, Nathaniel’s homosexuality, and on and on.
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