The Japanese Lover in Around the World

Mar 19, 2016 Barbara (Bobby) Title rated it really liked it

It's true, Allende tells a good story. I suspect much of the story will be absorbed much differently by younger folk who weren't born until long after the end of WWII than us old-timers who lived through those years. For me, I am in the latter group, and because I have read many books, fiction and non-fiction alike, about those times - the internment of the Japanese and the holocaust - those portions of Allende's story dragged a bit. Nevertheless, I loved how she brought in today's "problems" -- ...more

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Nov 04, 2015 Kate Z rated it liked it

I have not historically been a big fan of Allende but a friend of mine has wanted to read this one and I agreed. A different friend purchased the hard cover edition and loaned it to me (always more motivating for me to have the hardcover book in hand) and after The Tsar of Love and Techno I'm on a reading roll so I got started ... I haven't read an Allende since maybe Daughter of Fortune which means it's been about 15 years since I've been bold enough to try Allende again.

After about 2/3 of the I have not historically been a big fan of Allende but a friend of mine has wanted to read this one and I agreed. A different friend purchased the hard cover edition and loaned it to me (always more motivating for me to have the hardcover book in hand) and after The Tsar of Love and Techno I'm on a reading roll so I got started ... I haven't read an Allende since maybe Daughter of Fortune which means it's been about 15 years since I've been bold enough to try Allende again.

After about 2/3 of the way through although I was enjoying the story well enough, I didn't feel like this was going to do much to change my longstanding opinion of Allende. The other books of hers that I read The House of the Spirits and Daughter of Fortune were more along the lines of great South American epics - they were family sagas in the tradition of Gabriel Garcia Marquez (one of my favorites). I always felt like Allende gained notoriety because she was a woman writing in that tradition from that part of the world and it was "fashionable" to canonize female authors from under-represented areas of the "Western" world. I never really connected with her characters, even in these "epics" and I always felt like Allende spent much more time telling me how the characters felt than showing me who they were through their story. This book was more of that Allende; however, this book has much more of the feeling of contemporary lit fic that you would find on any given week on the octagonal table at the front of Barnes and Noble. I will say I am pleased that the story line does NOT alternate narrators and or timeframes.

I felt like Allende tried too hard here. The main character, Alma, is a Jewish refugee whose parents died in the Warsaw Ghetto who is shipped off to wealthy relatives in San Francisco. Then there is Irina, who ends up being her caregiver in Alma's old age who has secret (view spoiler). Then there is Alma's (cousin and) husband Nathaniel (view spoiler), her Japanese friend Ichimei who along with his family, in some of the most interesting parts of the novel (from the point of view of historical fiction anyway) is interred at Topaz during WW2. (view spoiler). Then there is the uber-perfect Isaac Belasco, the rich patriarch of the Belasco family and kind benefactor to the Fukuda family. Then we have Alma's long lost brother, shipped off to England when Alma went to San Francisco who became an RAF pilot, presumed dead, reappears as a Resistance fighter now living in Israel. The other main story thread involves Alma's caregiver Irina (view spoiler). It was all just too much for me. Too much drama. Too little heart of the matter. I want a character story that unfolds, not a movie or musical script where it's all song and dance and passion and heartbreak all in short little-made-for-TV-cue-the-dramatic-music-cut-to-commercial bursts

The story was fine enough and I was interested enough to just read along but I was hoping for, perhaps expecting, some of the famed great Allende to finally shine through for me but that hasn't been the case. This book has reinforced my earlier thoughts about Allende, not changed them.
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Jan 18, 2019 Pragya rated it liked it

Shelves: audio-books, libby, 2019

3.5 stars

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Jul 02, 2018 Daisy rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: california, japan, audio-library-books, moldova

I thought this was weak. Thin. Maybe it was the translation that felt wooden or the narration which sounded like the reading of a grocery list (sorry, but she emphasized the wrong words and didn't sound like she was listening to what she was reading), but I was just not moved by this story. ...more

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May 31, 2019 Suzanne rated it liked it

Shelves: historical-fiction

An eccentric old woman in a nursing home becomes the subject of interest when her caretaker and her grandson start digging into her past. Interesting, but not an engrossing read for me.

3 1/2 stars (out of 5)
Published in 2015
322 pages

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