Love and Other Consolation Prizes - Review

Love and Other Consolation  Prizes   🌟🌟🌟
by Jamie Ford
Published September 12, 2017, by Ballantine Books
Finished 9/19/2017

The story starts with Ernest Young as a small boy after his Chinese   mother has sent him sailing for a better life in America, where he is auctioned off at the 1909 Seattle Exposition.*  That piece of history, that such a thing really happened, is a troubling one to be sure and was one of the more interesting aspects.  But this is one of those times when I felt that the concept of a story was lost in the execution of it.  The pace was uneven, slow to start, better in the middle, and an ending that seemed to  drag out over several chapters.  

 

Ernest as a boy falls in love with two girls, and is as an adult  recounting their adventures growing up in a brothel, while anticipating the 1962 Seattle World's  Fair with his wife, Gracie.  Early on we know that one of those young girls is Gracie, although that's not either of their names.   So you keep reading to figure out this odd puzzle.  

I really had high hopes for this one.  Ford's first book is one of my favorites, but the next and this one were lacking that certain something that puts you on edge and makes you excited to pick it back up again where you left off.  Ernest was such a sweet character but I think he deserved a better story with more interesting players on his team.  I saw many similarities with On the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, but this one didn't match up.  I do appreciate receiving an advanced copy from NetGalley and the publisher.

*(I just had to go to Wikipedia to learn more about the auction, and maybe the finished book includes this in the author's note, I don't  know:

"A month-old orphaned boy named Ernest was raffled away as a prize. Although a winning ticket was drawn, nobody claimed the prize. The ultimate destiny of the child was still being investigated in 2009."  I do hope that little Ernest had a great life, and not in a brothel.)