The Japanese Lover by Isabel Allende

The Japanese Lover by Isabel Allende is a work of historical fiction that covers several generations and spans continents. From 1939 Poland to present day San Francisco, Allende’s characters are pummeled by society’s prejudices and their own fears.

Alma Mendel Belasco and Ichimei Fukuda love each other for decades. She is a Jewish refugee from Poland, sent as a young child to live on an estate with relatives in the US.  He is the son of the estate’s gardener.  Readers see their lives intertwined through the exchange of letters and fateful choices.

Present day chapters have Alma deciding to move to the Lark House nursing home.  There, she (and her grandson, Seth) meet Irina Bazili, a young caretaker who is troubled by her own past.

Reading The Japanese Lover made me want to explore other works, especially The House of the Spirits, by Isabel Allende.  I had hesitated to do so in the past because of her association with magical realism and some concerns that the plots would be too involved.  I found The Japanese Lover to be more similar to historical romances and, in fact, was surprised at how Allende felt it necessary to “tell,” to describe and explain the internment camps created for Japanese Americans during WWII. Our students read other works about that and those, like Otsuka’s When the Emperor was Divine, seem written for a more sophisticated audience.  Book clubs, however, will enjoy the friendships and affection in The Japanese Lover and could explore Allende’s writing with respect to women’s rights, to aging, and to homosexuality as well as society’s changing expectations regarding those issues.  

Starred reviews from Library Journal and Publishers Weekly.