Empire of the Sun

C

I read this in 5 days because I suddenly decided to go to a book club yesterday evening. After 3 years of waffling on alone on this blog I decided it might be good to discuss a book with a group. Last  week I found out about this Meet Up, signed up and bought the book.

Luckily I enjoyed reading it, but the evening was totally ruined by my eating a totally rank mussel chowder at the Jam Factory before the club started. I knew the soup was awful as I was eating it, but I stupidly carried on. My god, I was ill last night. Luckily now, about 18 hours later I feel a bit better. DO NOT EAT at the Jam Factory. Infact don't drink there either. Everything is over priced and rubbish. I have always disliked the Jam Factory, but now it's personal, the bastards poisoned me. 

Anyway, this book was great. I really enjoyed it. Jim is a priveliged 11 year old boy who lives a comfortable life with his English family in Shanghai. Suddenly , when the Japanese take over Shanghai in 1942, Jim's life is turned upside down. He is thrown into a world gone mad. He loses his parents, watches the Japaneese brutally kill most of the locals and he is left to roam around Shanghai under his own devices. He lives in various houses, living off cocktail biscuits and soda water and riding his bike through the big houses. He seems to have been totally forgotten about. I loved this opening third of the book. A weird, yet kind of fun, abandoned apocalyptic, playground for Jim. He has no idea what is going on. All he knows is that he is in awe of the Japanese and their lack of fear. Infact he wants to join the Japanese army and also thinks he is personally responsible for starting the war. 

Jim is then finally 'seen' and taken off to an internment camp. The book becomes highly strange and disconnected. You think Jim has travelled for days but the camp is just up the road .  He seems a brave little urchin ,whereas the adults around him are obviously totally disturbed by the war experience. Jim is the only person in the group brave enough to ask the Japanese guards for water. The Internment section is disturbing, this book is all about what people will do to survive and how Jim begins to view death and mutilation as normal. He is addicted to the planes and trucks, these machines are his only real friends. He does ask an old woman about when souls leave the body and he suddenly believes that he can bring dead people's souls back to them. This belief gives him great comfort. This section was very beautiful and so well written. This talk of souls was like a shining diamond in a pretty rough, relentless story.  

It all sounds pretty grim and to be honest it is, but Jim's positivity and desire to see only the good, (as only an innocent young lad can) is what keeps this book going.  People are treated so badly,especially the Chinese, and by the end of the book you understand that the Chinese were treated so appallingly by both the British overlords and then by the Japanese. They were treated as nothing more than dogs. 

 The death marches are again rather surreal, but I think that is because Jim is starving and he can't clearly see or interpret anything. The moments when one or two adults suddenly appear to care for Jim  are really moving because these times are so infrequent.  Every adult seems totally wrapped up in themselves. This book is totally devoid of sentimentality and even though the subject is grim,by the end you feel totally in awe of the human desire to stay alive.  (especially such a vulnerable lad) 

Ballard wrote this book from his own memories as a teenager in a Prisoner  of war camp in Shanghai. But this book is more fiction than truth because Ballard was interned with his family throughout and never became a feral child , living off his wits.

This 'made up 'section didn't bother me but many people at the book club were annoyed that Ballard had cheated the readers by making a ' Boy's Own adventure' out of events. I kind of agreed but hey, it's a novel and Ballard wanted to get across the isolation. Plus seeing all this destruction from the perspective of a naive , 11 year old abandoned child makes the war events even more chilling.

Now I need to watch the movie. I've heard it's far, far, less hard hitting than the book .  I will see! 

Case Histories

I loved Kate Atkinson's first book, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, but this one was just OK. I read most of it on the plane home, so it was like a good solid page turner.  But to be honest I didn't like any of the characters apart from Theo ( the fat guy) and even he was just desperately sad. Infact all I got from this book was quite a lot of sadness imvolving not living your life to your full potential because of the unsolved murder of someone you loved. 

 There were three murders in different decades and Jackson Brodie is the sad, lonely ( book theme) investigator bought in to solve these crimes years later. The beginning of the book was great as all murders were described and for the first 100 pages I was totally hooked. Then I lost  momentum as the style of writing and the depressing characters took over.   Each crime was cleverly looped in on each other within the book and from the point of view of writing style,  social commentary and structure this book was great. But from the point of view of plot and entertainment value it was a bit sluggish and in the end just a bit disappointing. The crime solutions just didn't work for me at all apart from the axe murder of the husband. 

I found out last week that this book also has been a mini series on BBC 1. I have to move away from reading these British mini- series kind of books, they ultimately annoy me. Maybe because all these books are all too close to home. I shouldn't read about modern British problems when I see them all around me every day!  What the hell shall I choose next?!  I know, something from a different country and a different time period! 

Elizabeth is Missing

I am honestly in a good mood this Sunday morning. In about half an hour I am off out with my brother and his kids to walk up and down some nearby hill.   So I thought i would settle down for an hour before and try and get into this book before he arrived.  Well, I have ended up cancelling my hour of reading pleasure and have decided to ditch the book and moan on my blog.   I have to stop reading this tripe. It was So boring and depressing I feel I am losing the will to live. Even the writing style got on my wick. Yes, I love descriptive books but descriptive for a reason.  ' She picked up her spoon and stirred her tea' or 'she watched the  rain drop go down the wall'. These are just dull as ditch water sentences.
If there was an ITV 7 channel this book would be on it as the midday drama for the terminally soul destroyed. How the hell did it get such good reviews?  This is bullshit. I blame Penguin publishers. If I remember rightly  'A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian' was similarly over hyped by them and accordingly I read this I almost died of boredom.  More wonderful  fodder for an  ITV 7 drama script.

Reviewers houldnt  mis-sell books with the blurb:  'Momento' meets 'Gone Girl' when it so obviously isn't. At least now I have stopped reading it. This is the second book in a row I have ditched.  This is unheard of for me, but hey, it feels good. 

Maybe the topic was just too grim for me. Writing about Alzhimers is bloody depressing.  I just didn't want to be inside the head of someone with this disease.   

Right time for something good! 

The Potter's Hand

X

As I was visiting my friend Jo in Stoke over New Year I decided to find out more about this city.  I realised I didn't have a clue about the life of WEdgewood and the potters of Staffordshire.  I got this book because I thought I would get a good story about this interesting time in the 18th century when people like Wedgewood were taking England into the industrial revolution. 

Unfortunately I was disappointed. The story was like wading through treacle.  All the characters were really flat and dull and when I read a novel I want a good story first.  Unfortunately A N Wilson didn't agree with this idea so this book was just a ploy to bang your head against the history wall. It really didn't work. It was just too much. Stories from Burslem in Stoke, mixed with tales of Catherine  the Great in Russia, who wanted Wedgewood to make her a massive tea service, all running alongside Wedgewood's nephew in the United States trying to get white clay from the Cherokee Indians and unfortunately getting caught up in the War of Independence and falling in love with an Indian woman.  It was just too much and didn't work because the characters were just too weak.    Honestly, Wilson should have just written a pure history book like all of his other ones, it would have been more successful.  Infact I got so annoyed by this ' book' I sped read the last half on the train to Reading and then wished I could have left it behind, but unfortunately it's a library book and I have to take it back.

A Gift for Rain

 

What an amazing book. I loved this so much and I feel so sad that I have finished it. Everything about it was beautiful from the cover, to the story; the setting to the poetic language. It was the story of 16 year old Philip Hutton, who was born in Penang , Malaysia to an English Dad and Chinese mum. He is an outsider and just before the war an enigmatic Japanese man comes into his life who teaches him aikido. (Aikujitsu, as it was called then.) and changes his perception on life. They become good friends/ soul mates/ lovers and of course this Japanese guy ultimately is a major force behind the military assault on Malaysia in the Second World War. Both Philip and Endo-San, his friend, have to come to terms with being pawns in this awful war and Philip has to accept that Endo-San has betrayed his confidences and deceived him. 

I felt like I had been transported to Penang Malaysia for the period before, during and after the  Japanese invasion. I honestly felt like I was back in SE Asia with the smells, the sound of the sea, the people, the buildings, the food, the descriptions of the land. This book portrayed so clearly what it was like to live under the Japanese in Malaysia during the Second World War.  How brutal was it?! Bloody hell. The Japanese invaders were ( mostly) highly cultured, barbaric monsters.  I always thought the ingenuity of the Japanese torture methods were figments of people's imagination, until I read this.  But yet , the human stories in this book and the ties between families and friends were totally enthralling and I was hooked on the beauty of  this book completely! 

Philip's English family were amazing. They never left Penang even though the majority of Brits fled Malaysia on boats as soon as the Japanese started to advance through the jungle. All of his family were supported by the local Indian, Malay and Chinese communities apart from Philip who decides that in order to keep his family safe he must work for the Japanese invaders. How Philip squares his duplicitous life working for both sides is extremely interesting. I loved trying to work out how he could live with himself and also how he could have done anything different.  I also loved Endo -San, just like everyone else does in this book.. What a dude he is! a dangerous, powerful, enigmatic, spiritual martial arts expert...

Endo-San and Philip's Chinese Grandfather have a kind of spiritual understanding. They both seem to know and accept that what happens on this Earth is part of a bigger continuing cycle and that we will meet our closest friends, lovers and family members again in another adventure the next time we battle/love each other on earth.  I loved these references to reincarnation. For me it is so refreshing and comforting to read about reincarnation when it is talked about with such strength.  I think this is rare in many English language books. 

A huge story told with a lot of compassion. Yes, a gem of a book and one I will not forget quickly. 

The Steep Approach to Garbadale

I really enjoyed an Iain Banks book at the beginning of 2014 so I thought I would do the same this year. All I can say is this book could have been so brilliant and the start was amazing!   The main character, Alban, was a sexy dude and the story had potential. But unfortunately Banks couldn't keep up the momentum and apart from the odd few pages of brilliant writing this was a pretty average read.   it was a shame because it could have been so good  but I just think Iain Banks just run out of steam.

It seemed like Banks was using Alban, the main guy, as a mouth piece for his own political views and it all turned into a weird rant against America and capatalism. the sort of sound bites that would come out of the mouth of a 17 year old student. Stuff that seemed a bit out of place and disjointed in a novel.

The first half was really good and pretty funny but it just didn't keep up the momentum and I really feel like I've wasted my precious time reading it to the end. I feel a bit disappointed. It is as if a gremlin author came along and sabotaged the second half of the book.  I had to carry on reading because I just believed that it would get better but it never really did. Oh well.  I won't waste any more time writing about it! 

Barbed Wire and Babushkas

Really enjoyed this travel book. Two British canoeists decide to row down one of the longest and least known rivers in the world.( well , unknown to the West.)  The Amur-or Black Dragon river to the Chinese- is about 4, 400 km long,starts in Mongolia, separates the sensitive countries of China and Russia for over half it's length and goes through the least known parts of wooded Siberia. I loved it because I knew nothing about this part of the world and I have been googling the towns and villages they rowed through on their way.  It took them 107 days and mostly they camped along the Russian side of the river.  They were not given permission by the Chinese authorities to enter Chinese waters or lands and often had to guess in which country Islands,which popped up in the middle of the river,were in!  They only made a mistake once by camping on a Chinese Island but the guards in the Watch tower were luckily quite chilled about it. 

This book was not really about canoeing but about the people they met along the way. Whenever they came across a village or city they would stay in a hotel and restock  food and people were obviously totally intrigued by them.  They could not comprehend that they were travelling the whole length of the river at all but were totally flabbergasted that they had rowed down from the nearest town! Funny. 

There was obviously lots of beaurocracy and a few times they were locked out of villages with barbed wire fences  with patrolling guards along the perimeter,because the local Russian border police didn't want foreigners entering the village. The guards probably wanted something to do.  It wasn't clear when this exhibition took place  but I would say from the lack of mobile devices and from music references about 1999/2000. Obviously the writer was having a great time and the tone of the book is not serious at all. More like VIZ in places, especially all the stereotypical lusty Russian girl references. But hey, this guy was writing from his heart and it was obvious that he had spent a long time writing a diary! 

 you get a clear feeling of how Russian policy after the break up of the USSR had basically left this area of Siberia to rot. The river wasn't really used by the Russians to move anything because the Transsiberian railway was so nearby whereas Chinese barges were constant going back and forth and up and down. There was high unemployment amoung local Russian  river dwellers and a general fear of theEntrepreneurial Chinese. Also the towns on the other bank, in China, looked far more affluent. Luckily the guys paid for a travel visa to go into a Chinese town for three days and they were blown away by the trade, noise and vibrancy of the town. 

 Other problems the two guys dealt with were being shot at by over zealous guards, being told exactly where to camp every night. Not having decent enough maps, being flooded out in their tents, having packets of noodles and cigarettes thrown at them by Chinese sailors, being mobbed by Russian prostitutues( really?!) and often getting beautiful gifts whenever they left a Village or town by the suddenly friendly border guards. 

!! I often thought the references to pissed Russian men and horny prostitutes was far too stereotypical and I hope the author was just over exaggerating. There was not much at all about the politics and history between the two countries. Obviously relations were tense though!   Apart from the fact that Russians took away this land from Manchurian Chinese because of the lucrative trade in fur trapping. (A similar story to the Gold Rush in California.)  but there was enough to give me a taster to find out more about this interesting, yet completely unknown part of the world. 

Cheers Diana for this great birthday present!