The Sewing Machine – Natalie Fergie

1911, Clydebank in Scotland, and Jean Ferrier and Donald Cameron are working in the burgeoning Singer sewing machine factory; but not for long.  Union man Donald falls foul of management, loses his job and becomes a marked man in Glasgow necessitating a move across to Edinburgh to work in the Leith shipyards.  Jean goes with him but as she leaves she secretes a message in the last sewing machine she works on.

1954, Edinburgh, and Connie Baxter helps her mother, Kathleen, thread the needle of her old sewing machine and teases her for the notebooks she compiles detailing all the jobs she undertakes on the old Singer, whether for profit or pleasure.

2016, Edinburgh, and thirty-six year old Fred Morrison takes possession of his recently deceased grandfather’s flat.  He also inherits several cupboards full of junk, including an old sewing machine.  He is out of work and out of a relationship so with time to spare he tries his hand at sewing.

Their three stories are told in alternating episodes, the sewing machine providing a common thread; but it is not the only one.  Family histories unfold; a patchwork of relationships builds up; long held but little understood mysteries begin to be unpicked.  Enough of the sewing metaphors - although with the book itself brimming with them they are hard to avoid.

Those who like family sagas or sewing are most likely to enjoy the book.  I count myself as neither of these but still found it a good read with a satisfying resolution.

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet – Jamie Ford

The eponymous establishment is the Panama Hotel in Seattle, located at the juncture of the old Chinatown and Japantown areas of the city.  For Henry Lee, Chinese American, fifty-six and still grieving his wife’s recent death, it is a familiar landmark from his childhood, but it has been boarded up for decades.

Now, in 1986, new owners have moved in and are renovating.  They have made a discovery in the basement – suitcases and boxes of belongings stored there by families of Japanese heritage who were shipped out of town and interned in the post-Pearl Harbour panic of 1942.  For Henry it both brings back memories and holds out the prospect of finding a long lost treasure.

Cue the flashback to 1942 where twelve year old Henry Lee is the only Chinese kid in a white middle class school.  There is one more outsider there, a Japanese American girl.  Henry knows (his father tells him every day) that China and Japan are implacable enemies at war on the other side of the Pacific; but here at school Keiko is his only ally, and soon a friend.

The novel twin tracks Henry’s 1986 search for his hidden treasure and his 1942 cross cultural experiences, though the latter increasingly take prominence.  Both trajectories are a little predictable and the characters rather one-dimensional, but the historical context is interesting and informative.

It is an easy read, quicker than its 450 pages threaten, and it provides the reader with the promised mix of bitter and sweet.  But it is bitterness and sweetness rather than tragedy and passion, so all a bit restrained; which is maybe as it should be to reflect the culture of the protagonists.