Kuala Lumpar - February 1945
"Teenage boys had begun to disappear."
At first, the Japanese invaders were welcomed as Malayans hoped for "a better colonizer" than the British had turned out to be. But after the Japanese ended up killing more people in only three years of occupation than the British killed in more than fifty, they saw their past - and their future - much differently.
Vanessa Chan's The Storm We Made is the story of one fictional family caught squarely in the middle of what happened in Malaya between 1935 and 1945. The novel's central character, an ambitious and resentful Eurasian woman who realizes that she will remain a second class citizen in her own country as long as the British are there, dreams of a better life. And when a smooth-talking Japanese business man offers her a chance to help Malaya end its British rule - even if it means spying on her own husband - she is all in.
The Storm We Made begins in early1945 when Cecily's family, like all of those around her, is struggling just to survive from one day to the next. Her husband's daily obsession is simply to find something for the family to eat, Cecily's to protect her children, especially her two daughters, from the Japanese soldiers who roam the city all day long "recruiting" girls as young as eight or nine years old for military brothels. But ironically, it is her son, not one of her daughters, who disappears on his fifteenth birthday.
"...as with the pieces she had set in motion ten years before, there was no fixing to be done. There was no coming back from this."
Vanessa Chan alternates flashback chapters to 1935 with the present to show exactly how and why Cecily planted the seeds of her own family's destruction, beginning on the night she first met Mr. Fujiwara, a prominent Japanese businessman favored by the British. Cecily, who carried the blood of the country's original Portuguese invaders in her veins, was a soft target for the persuasive Fujiwara. She already felt slighted and looked down upon by the British wives whose husbands her own husband worked with every day, and Fujiwara offered her the chance to get even with them all. Fujiwara convinced Cecily that the British would ultimately lose to Germany's aggression and would have to abandon its interests in Asia. With her help, Japan could be prepared to fill that void, and Asians would finally be given the chance to govern themselves.
"Yet perhaps this was what a woman's idealism is: not the reach for a utopia - everyone had lived long enough to know perfection was beyond reach - but the need to transform one thing into something better."
Best be careful what you wish for, Cecily.
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| Vanessa Chan author photo |
This sounds good - and as if it would be perfect for my book group, despite the fact that some of them don't like historical fiction as much as I do! (perhaps they should remember to identify good books for us to read when it is their turn, rather than grumble when I do)
ReplyDeleteI think this would make a really good book club kind of book because there are lots of things in it that lend themselves to discussion and differences of opinion, especially in the cases of the different choices that the main character makes over a number of years that do not often have the outcome she hoped for. I didn't know much about the WWII era history of that part of the world (still don't), so I think I came away at least a little better informed about what happened there in the thirties and forties. Now, that's not to say you won't get some grumbling responses to your choice. :-)
DeleteYou do need to be careful what you wish for! I only know a little bit about Malaya's history during WWII...mostly from reading Guests of the Emperor by Jill Churchill. This book sounds interesting, but also kind of sad.
ReplyDeleteIt's very sad, Lark, both generally and in the specifics about what happened to the central family of the story. But it also turned out to be much more informative than I had imagined it would be, and that's the main reason I read as much historical fiction as I do. I don't know the novel you mentioned, so I'll take a look for it. I like the setting and the period.
DeleteI know very little about what was happening in the pacific during WW II but the little I do know is bad in terms of how the Japanese army behaved in places they conquered. I think this would be a good novel to learn more history.
ReplyDeleteIt also gives a snapshot of how Malaya was governed by the British pre-WWII and what the various classes of Malayans felt about British rule. Really, it reminded me of what India must have been like during the same period. No doubt about it, Japanese rule was brutal, especially when compared to the almost benign rule of the Brits.
DeleteThis sounds very intense and very sad, in the sense that Cecily compromises the future she is trying to protect.
ReplyDeleteShe definitely messed up things for herself and her family, and that it was all done with high hopes that she was creating a better world for her children is what really makes it so sad. I'm curious now to see what else this author comes up with.
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