Published November 3, 2015
Atria Books
It came late in the year, but I believe I have finally read my favorite book of 2015. Allende’s latest is a beautiful meditation on love, aging, and regret explored through the relationship of two disparate women: privileged and elderly Alma Belasco and young, haunted Irina Bazili.
Irina has found peace and refuge from her troubled past working with the residents of the Lark House senior residence. But she is drawn to one particular resident – Alma. Alma is a successful fabric artist and member of an old respected San Francisco family. That same family is baffled when one day Alma declares she no longer wishes to preside over charity functions, or live on the sprawling family estate, Sea Cliff. Instead she packs the bare essentials (including her cat), and moves to Lark House. Soon she has Irina working part time for her, helping her sort out a lifetime of papers, clippings, and photos. This is partly to help her grandson Seth, who has long been working on a book about his family. Seth and Irina wonder: who is sending Alma gardenias and mysterious letters each week? And where does she disappear to for days at a time?
We are taken in and out of various points in Alma’s life, from her childhood when she was sent from Poland to live at Sea Cliff with her relatives in the U.S. to wait out the war (a wait that would never end) to young adulthood and beyond. It is at Sea Cliff, we learn, that as a child she befriended Ichimei Fukuda, the son of the Bellascos’ gardener. Irina’s story is also revealed, a bit at a time, but it is Alma’s tale that is the centerpiece of this novel.
The Japanese Lover kept surprising me. Just as I felt the story was coming to a natural resolution it would deepen or change or twist. The ache of regret over choices made, or made for you, and their ramifications over a lifetime is always in the background but still the book manages to not be utterly bleak or hopeless. (That said, I may have had to dab at my eyes once or twice.)
An advance galley of this book was kindly provided by the publisher with no expectations other than an honest opinion.
