Multiple narratives swirl around Alma -Belasco, a Polish teenager who escaped the Nazis in 1939 and arrived in San Francisco to share a privileged life with an indulgent aunt and uncle. Now 73, Alma is a favorite resident in a senior facility, devotedly looked after by her grandson Seth and her caretaker Irina. Alma begins to divulge careful details of her well-guarded past to the young pair, revealing five decades framed by a never--ending passion for her one true-albeit impossible-love. Joanna Gleason mostly succeeds at voicing a broad range of ages, backgrounds, even ethnicities. That said, a few minutes of direction spent on pronunciation--Alma's cat's name is pronounced neh-koh for the Japanese word for cat, not knee-koh; the name Takao doesn't rhyme with "cacao"-would have led to a more accurate performance. VERDICT Beyond the colorful cast of surprisingly diverse characters, -Allende's multigenerational saga seamlessly weaves in monumental headlines from the second half of the 20th century, from the Holocaust to the Japanese American prison camps, the French Resistance to postwar racism, the AIDS crisis to heinous child abuse, and more. ["Allende's latest, a glorious family saga...is a beautiful tribute to devotion": LJ 11/1/15 review of the Atria hc.]-Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon, -Washington, DC © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Honored last year with the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her inspiring fiction and soul-baring memoirs, Allende (Ripper, 2014, etc.) offers a saga of a couple that keeps its affair secret for the better half of a century. One of the lovers, Alma Belasco (nee Mendel), was barely 8 years old when her Polish parents, fearing rumors of war could prove true, sent her to live with her wealthy American uncle and aunt in San Francisco; bereft yet stoical when she arrives at Sea Cliff, she found allies who were destined to become "her life's only loves": her shy but devastatingly handsome and uber-intuitive cousin Nate Belasco; and her childhood playmate Ichimei Fukado, the charismatic son of the Belascos' gardener, whose family was sent to an internment camp following the attack on Pearl Harbor. That this trio will ultimately help sort each other out is foregone, though how and when is not immediately clear. Allende prolongs the suspense, sprinkling Ichi's soulful letters to Alma into the narrative of her postwar career as a textile artist with an outwardly perfect marriage and her abrupt decision to move out of the family estate into a Spartan room at Lark Housea slightly whackadoodle senior living residence that was bequeathed to the city by a chocolate magnate. At times Allende's glib humor misfires ("I get them hooked on a TV series, because nobody wants to die before the final episode," quips a member of the cleaning staff) or seems stunningly off-key ("Mexico greeted them with its well-known clichs"). Some readers may wince at a closeted gay character's soft-serve admission: "Hearts are big enough to contain love for more than one person." But among the white ponytailed hipsters and yoga-practicing widows at the senior center, Alma stands outshe's haughty and self-centered and, after decades in the rag trade, "[dresses] like a Tibetan refugee." She's also a bit of a yenta: she deploys her part-time secretary, Irina (a doughty 23-year-old Romanian migr), and grandson Seth (Irina's love-struck suitor) to put her letters, diaries, documents, and other detritus in order. Then she toodles off in her tiny car every few weeks with a small overnight bag. Packed with silk nightgowns. Could this 80-something woman actually be meeting a lover, wonders Irina (who is grappling with some secret baggage of her own)? Just you wait. Vividly and pointedly evoking prejudices "unconventional" couples among the current-day elderly faced (and some are still battling), Allende, as always, gives progress and hopeful spirits their due. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Themes of lasting passion, friendship, reflections in old age, and how people react to challenging circumstances all feature in Allende's newest saga, which moves from modern San Francisco back to the traumatic WWII years. As always, her lively storytelling pulls readers into her characters' lives immediately. Irina Bazili, personal assistant to elderly designer Alma Belasco, suspects her employer has a lover. What else would explain her secretive excursions from her nursing home and the mysterious yellow envelopes arriving in Alma's mail? Intervening sections reveal the lifelong bond between Alma, a Polish Jewish refugee sent to live with California relatives in 1939, and Ichimei Fukuda, sensitive youngest son of her family's gardener. Despite many separations over the years, their love remains strong. Descriptions of the Fukudas' forced internment at a Utah camp, where life continues behind barbed wire, create a memorable impression. Equally haunting is Irina's painful backstory, which skillfully unfolds. Although not as complex or richly detailed as Allende's earlier novels, the story has many heartfelt moments, and readers will be lining up for it. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Big publisher push indicates her novel will be reviewed as widely and read by the public as enthusiastically as all of her previous well-received novels.--Johnson, Sarah Copyright 2015 Booklist

Allende's (The House of Spirits) magical and sweeping tale focuses on two survivors of separation and loss: the elderly, renowned designer Alma Belasco, whose silk-screened creations fuel the family foundation, and her young secretary, mysterious Irina Bazili, who works at the progressive old people's home, Lark House, where Alma lives. Their narratives, however, go far beyond the retelling of Alma's remarkable affair with a Japanese gardener's son, Ichimei Fukuda, its heartbreaking end, and her subsequent marriage to loyal friend Nathaniel-or Irina's heartbreaking struggle to break free of her haunting past. Allende sweeps these women up in the turmoil of families torn apart by WWII and ravaged by racism, poverty, horrific sexual abuse-and old age, to which Allende pays eloquent attention. "There's a difference between being old and being ancient," Irina is told. "It doesn't have to do with age, but physical and mental health.... However old one is, we need a goal in our lives. It's the best cure for many ills." Befitting the unapologetically romantic soul bared here-the poignant letters to Alma from Ichimei are interspersed throughout-love is what endures. (Nov.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

ISABEL ALLEN DE HAS built her reputation on romantic love. But her new fairy tale of a novel, "The Japanese Lover," doesn't allow love to get in the way of comfort. As in all of Allende's fiction, we find a large, colorful cast of characters, this time swirling around the octogenarian Alma Belasco, happily if peculiarly ensconced in Lark House, a retirement home in San Francisco. Foremost is Irina Bazili, the young Moldovan immigrant whose repressed "terrors" of adolescence form a drumbeat of foreshadowing through the three years of her service to Alma. But as the story lurches back to the late 1930s and then to the highlights between, we also meet Alma's Jewish family in pre-World War II Europe; the San Francisco relatives who adopt her; the entire family of her Japanese lover, Ichimei Fukuda; and a host of other lovers, care givers, evildoers and saints. No character is so minor as to lack a back story. At the same time, no character, including Alma and Irina, manages to fill in his or her outlines and command our undivided attention. Lark House itself is a fairy-tale setting: a graduated-care facility on a "magnificent property," intended for "elderly persons of slender means." It serves organic food, showcases a wide range of sensibilities (though not of race or class) and gives its residents both complete freedom and individualized attention. Isn't it pretty to think so? More problematic is the very real history forging the lives of its residents, particularly Alma. Although it skips the Vietnamese conflict, which featured in Allende's novel "The Infinite Plan," "The Japanese Lover" covers a lot of historical and social ground: the European Jewish diaspora, World War II concentration camps, pre- and postwar racism, illegal abortion, AIDS. But the headlines vanish quickly and almost without leaving a mark. A prominent midcentury Jewish family never encounters anti-Semitism: They are welcomed at the best clubs and debutante parties; their son attends Harvard with no mention of quotas. Traumas like the loss of family members to the Nazis merit nods toward horror, but material pleasures do much to overcome their effects. The range of characters with which Allende peoples her story quickly devolves into a series of stereotypes: the wealthy Jews, the "serene" Japanese, the traumatized and possibly alcoholic Eastern Europeans. Such a large cast inevitably produces forgot-to-tell-you flashbacks, as when Alma's lost brother suddenly appears, recounts his story, vanishes and then later reappears with a parenthetical reminiscence involving Israel, Ben-Gurion and the Mossad. A brief, vivid scene in Tijuana suggests the textured writing Allende is capable of, but the lengthy expositions that dominate most of the narrative lose their grounding, serving instead to instruct us in well-worn 20th-century history. Dialogue either conveys information ("I have an inoperable brain tumor") or gives vent to direct emotions ("You know I've loved you for three years"). This last utterance is typical of the novel's "great loves," which the reader is meant to accept at face value. Like knights on horseback, the men in this story rescue the women - and when they issue orders ("Well, Irina, that's going to have to change"), the women are grateful. Millions of people have traded great passion for conventional happiness or been enticed into love by a desirable lifestyle. But only in fairy tales do such compromises occur without many palpable consequences. When Allende sets her tales in distant or exotic locales, it's easy to go along for the ride. 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. Who is sending gardenias to an elderly woman in a San Francisco retirement home? LUCY FERRISS'S latest novel is "A Sister to Honor."