The final chapter shifts to a first-person narrative, the narrator stumbling across (in Shinjuku, of course) an old friend from school, Komai Keisuke, whom he had not seen for some two decades. You can't expect everything to be perfect. When you expect too much, you can be disappointed, believe me." On the night of the 1953 Coronation ceremony, the expatriate community in Hong Kong has gathered for a celebration party, and while they strain their ears to hear the proceedings on a faulty wireless, Joy, a rebellious 21 year-old, falls in love at first sight. She is engaged within twenty-four hours, but then will not see her fiancé again for a year... There is quite a bit of overlap however, and one character, Senda, features in most of the episodes, including several in which he is the main character, first as a bartender at The Pot Still and then as owner of his own bar, Lui. Sheltering Rain" is not a Romance, not in my estimation, anyway, but, as it turns out, it is a LOVE STORY, a love story of the truest sort. It is a love story of a family, of mothers and daughters, of failed love and love that lasted the test of time. Its a story to teach us about the illusion of "perfect" that we believe we see in others, and a story about finding perfection amongst the broken reality of family life.

Pienso que JoJo Moyes, debe tomar un descanso y posiblemente cambiar la tematica de sus libros, al menos ya a mi me cansan un poco. Este libro nos lleva a la vida de tres mujeres Jo, Kate y Sabine que son abuela, madre e hija respectivamente, nos cuenta sus malentendidos, su falta de comunicacion y tal vez la falta de ponerse en el zapato de la otra. Nos muestra que no importa la edad a veces no maduramos y no enfrentamos el daño que le hacemos a la persona mas cercana por no saber comunicarnos, es mas no por enfrentarnos para hablar. Bueno habiendo despotricado de estas tres mujeres, que a cual esta peor una que la otra, el libro en general no está mal, Jojo Moyes escribe muy bien, por lo tanto, su ejercicio de enlazar la historia familiar de estas tres mujeres, de acercarlas y retratar a una familia, los malos entendidos y los problemas entre padres e hijos, que, todo hay que decirlo, existen en todas las familias, ha logrado en general crear un libro que está pasable. Shinjuku itself is in a constant state of flux in the novel, being reshaped, replacing the Ginza as the entertainment-heart of the city, and becoming more vibrant (and less seedy) with the expansion of the local trains stations -- which also brings more interest from outsiders, including gangsters. Joy, la abuela, es de la que conocemos más en cuanto a su historia de vida, la relación que tenía con su madre y la manera en que conoce a Edward el que es su marido, su casamiento y su vida conyugal, pero es una mujer estoica, poco dada a mostrar sus sentimientos, flemática y ciertamente amante de los caballos.Now let’s set that aside. I couldn’t understand why make Sabine go too far with Thom who shares history with her mother. I get that she resented the prospect of a relationship between him and her mom, and a 16 year-old who might have daddy issues is inevitable to crush on older men that are old enough to father her, but that seduction scene? It was awkward, disgusting, and so unnecessary. Also.. whatever happened with Kate’s half brother? You can't just unveil a secret like that and leave us hanging not knowing about it further. It was like a hole in the story. Without wanting to give anything away, the story behind the photograph is all too easy to guess and no surprise at all really, but again the story never developed. Sabine was your typical teenager, Kate came across as a weak woman who jumped in and out of relationships without a second thought, Joy was a misfit, and Edward, well apart from bits of information when they met you never really found out anything about him (except that he was a typical man of that period!). Other characters in the book never came to anything, in fact, I did wonder why a few of them were mentioned at all. Moyes, a young Brit, again proves herself a worthy successor to Maeve Binchy and Rosamund Pilcher with her second novel (after Sheltering Rain), a warmhearted Continue reading » The dominant theme of The Sheltering Rain is inevitable change, and attempts to maintain the comfortably familiar. I can still feel the familiar ache just looking at the cover of Sheltering Rain, it's sheer bliss then it isn't. I can never look at it the same way again without feeling lonely.

Since I often find the plots to be long and terribly slow-moving and the characterization to be both flat and unrealistically glamorous, the family saga is usually one of my least favorite forms of fiction. Sheltering Rain, a debut novel from the United Kingdom, is blessedly different. So also when he introduces the "Sage of Shinjuku", who: "knows everything about its night life, every bar and club in the district [...] He's not a fortune-teller, but he has a discerning eye", to whom many locals go for advice, but who ultimately proves not to be as reliable as everyone had thought. Sheltering Rain is deeply moving and yet unnervingly depressing. It makes me feel depressed anyway even if it's not depressing. I love Jojo Moyes but this is not one of her best. Let me clarify things first, I didn't love the book as much as I'd loved her other novels, though I had a great time reading it and to say that I cried when the story ended is overrated. But somewhere deep in my heart I couldn't deny the fact that I feel sad, a trifle breathless with it all when the last sentence had been delivered.Kate's going through a bit of a rough patch and decides to send her sixteen year old daughter, Sabine, to stay with her parents in Ireland while she sorts things out. Her mother and father, Joy and Edward, take Sabine into their home despite the fact that their relationship with Kate has been very strained for many years. Ich hätte gerne ein Buch, bei dem es sich um Annie dreht, denn aaaah, sie ist mir ans Herz gewachsen und ich will mehr von ihr.