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This is another book voted on by my book club that I had never heard of before, but I’m so glad they made me read it because it is sooooo goooooood!
It’s about a lot of different things and I’m not even sure which character to identify as the MC. It starts with Irina Bazili, who is probably the most likely candidate for main character, even though it’s Alma’s lover who takes the title role.
Irina is an immigrant from Moldova with a tragic past, but the reader doesn’t learn any specifics about her past until close to the end of the book. At the beginning of the story, Irina gets a job at Lark House, a retirement community in California, where she attracts the attention of Alma Belasco, a wealthy widow who is relatively abel bodied and fiercely independent. Alma hires Irina as her assistant and also to help Alma write her memoir. In the course of her work, Irina and Alma’s grandson, Seth, discover Alma’s deepest, darkest secret: the love of her life is a Japanese American named Ichimei.
The book covers so much that it’s really hard to capture in one review. Alma, a Jew, was sent by her parents from Poland to live with her Aunt Lillian and Uncle Isaac in San Francisco when things started to look ugly for the Jews in Poland in the late 1930s. Her parents stayed behind, and although it’s never confirmed, most likely died in a concentration camp. Lillian and Isaac become even closer to Alma than her own parents. Alma, in turn, becomes close with Ichimei, the son of Isaac’s gardener and a pretty fantastic botanist in his own right.
The book covers everything from Alma’s immigration and Ichimei’s father’s immigration to Alma’s death, which takes place a few years after Alma’s death.
SPOILER ALERT
Alma and Ichimei never got married, although they did have a number of sexcapades, one of which managed to result in Alma “getting in trouble.”
Rather than telling Ichimei the truth and marrying him, Alma tells her cousin, Nathaniel, who solves the problem by marrying her, at which point Alma breaks it off with Ichimei, still without telling him what’s really going on. Even in the 1950s everyone is a little concerned that these two cousins are marrying each other, although Isaac couldn’t be happier because he loves the bride and groom more than anyone else in the world.
Although it lacks passion, their marriage is not the miserable pandering to society you might think it is. They genuinely love each other, although in a platonic sense. After Alma’s miscarriage, the couple manage a few drunken nights of awkward sex, which is all it takes to create Larry, the Belasco heir and Seth’s father. In the meantime, partway through their marriage, Alma takes up her torrid love affair with Ichimei and Nathaniel turns out to be a homosexual who carried out a long love affair with a man named Lenny, who the reader first meets as another Lark House resident and long-time friend of Alma’s without any explanation as to where he came from or how he knows Alma. That all comes later.
All this information is given to the reader interspersed with Irina’s perception of what’s going on and all the different layers of her employer’s life she is slowly unveiling, one by one. Eventually, we learn what Irina’s issues are and she does address them, ostensibly to live happily ever after with Seth.
That was my one complaint about this book. Seth fell in love with Irina almost immediately and spent most of the book pursuing her. Rather than taking no for an answer, he is rewarded for his efforts when she agrees to move in with him and reveals her ugly past to him so they can both move past it.
What? No.
No means no. Given Irina’s repeated attempts to brush off Seth’s advances, I was surprised and dismayed when she finally gave in. I suppose I can give her a pass because she has suffered legitimate trauma that gives her a reason for being hesitant to enter into a romantic relationship, but personally, I had not seen any previous indication that she wanted to be with him before he forced her hand and I don’t like the message that sends to readers. It would have been much more touching and made more sense for Irina to show affection for Seth, but hesitance at entering into a relationship with him. We wouldn’t have to know the reason for her hesitance to be convinced she felt something for him.
In reality, don’t make a girl force her hand. It will not end well for you.
Other than that, I thought this was a beautiful book about the different ways people either confront adversity or avoid dealing with it. The characters were beautifully portrayed and I enjoyed every minute of this excellent read.
What did you guys read this week? Anything else you wouldn’t have picked up on your own?