The Japanese Lover by Isabel Allende was a book club read and although the story sounded intriguing, I struggled through only the first 50 pages (my criteria before closing a book). The problem may have been because I'd just finished reading
The Nightingale which was such a powerful and well written novel and The Japanese Lover seemed to be a list of choppy sentences, with very little dialog, rather than a story. The
NY Times review states that the story has a thin plot and weakly motivated characters with dialog which simply conveys information. The novel, however, does have some
good reviews so I'll be interested to hear what the rest of the book club thought about it.
