I read this for a book club. It was a WWII/leprosy/coming-of-age/racial understanding/forbidden love/unconditional love story. Yeah. A little too much going on maybe.
Stephen, a Chinese young man from Hong Kong, gets seriously ill and must leave college to spend some time recovering at the family beach house in Japan. His father, long estranged from the family (for business reasons, not so uncommon among the Chinese), lives in Kobe Japan. WWII is just breaking out, with the Japanese soldiers pressing through China, killing and plundering. Stephen finds tranquility, acceptance, purpose and love at the beach house. Meanwhile, back at home his mom and dad are having marriage troubles and the war is growing ever closer to his family and friends.
I actually thought the book was OK. It was sweet in a lot of ways.
But. Everything happened so fast that it all felt contrived to me. Deep relationships sprung up way too fast and on too little foundation. The 20 something young man (I think he had his 21st birthday at the beach house) had a voice that sounded more like a 12-year-old boy to me. And way, way, too much happened in one year to feel real. And I had some questions about the leprosy community that Stephen learns about. I thought such communities were receiving medical help by the start of World War two? That part seemed a bit anachronistic to me, but perhaps I'm just insufficiently educated about leprosy in Japan. The book made me think a little bit about The Pearl Diver by Jeff Talarigo, which was probably the most depressing book I've read in a very long time. It's about leprosy in Japan too.
I loved the snapshot of Japan that this book drew. I felt an attraction to life in a small Japanese village as Gail Tsukiyama painted it. I found the caretaker of the beach house, Matsu, believable and lovable.
It was a pleasant, if slightly unbelievable, book.
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