Allende’s prose style is simple, sometimes so unadorned as to seem awkward — perhaps an intentional tic or an artifact of its translation from the Spanish. Only over time does the novel’s multilayered story, with its occasional hints of a parallel spirit world, grip the reader and acquire poetic force.
The Japanese Lover feels, at first, as nutritious as Grandma’s freshly baked sugar cookies. But there’s nothing cloying about this unabashedly sweet story — and nothing unambitious about it, either.
Unfortunately, love’s intoxication, like the scent of the gardenias Ichimei sends Alma over many years, fails to lift this new novel above its thin plot and weakly motivated characters.
