Songs of Willow Frost by Jamie Ford

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I love talking about the books I've loved but I hate to give too much away in the telling. Reviews matter to me, not just the writing of them but reading them and sharing them and I am always grateful when a reviewer manages to tell me why she or he loved (or didn't love) a book without spoiling anything for me. I can tell you that just as Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet yanked on my heartstrings, so did Songs of Willow Frost. I can tell you that the prose is wonderfully unpretentious and yet deep and luminous, and that there are great lines that you just have to read twice or three times they are so meaningful. I can tell you there are surprises along the way to keep you turning pages and needing to know what is to become of the Chinese-American boy whose mother relinquished him to an orphanage years before and who suddenly sees her on a movie screen in a Seattle theater with a different name.

I can't say I loved it more than Hotel, or even as much, though I did love it. Perhaps it was Hotel's premise that resonated within me to a deeper degree. I admit I have a hard time summoning empathy for women who allow and then stay with men who abuse them. My deepest apologies if I offend anyone by saying that. I am not saying I can't summon the empathy, I am saying it is difficult for me. But this story, which moves back and forth between William's story and his mother's, is moving and compelling, even in those moments when I, had I been Willow, would have done something very different.

Songs of Willow Frost will tug and tear and tenderize. It's the kind of story that reminds you why stories exist.



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