Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

* 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-.