I finished reading Love and Other Consolation Prizes: A Novel by Jamie Ford just in time to meet him at my local library. And I just bought his other two books, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet (a bestseller), and Songs of Willow Frost so I  could get them signed by him before reading them too.

RELATED POST: Meeting the Pulitzer  Prize winning author of The Sympathizer

The themes of his books appear to revolve around Asian immigrants in Seattle and the stories are on the “sentimental” side, maybe a bit too much for me. But I did still really enjoy this book, which is about a young boy, Ernest, who is auctioned off at the 1902 Worlds Fair to a lady who runs a brothel. The boy ends up loving his new and glamorous life as a houseboy and later a driver for this brothel.

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