The Story Sisters | Alice Hoffman

I just finished this remarkable book. It packs quite a punch and delivers it in a beautiful style. I was a bit apprehensive given it is a little bit Gothic and deals with child abuse, but it does both in an understated way so that we capture detail out of the corner of our eyes rather than fully in the face.

The Story sisters of the title are three girls growing up on the north east coast of the USA. They are Elv, Claire and Meg and they are very close in age and have a very close relationship in which they create a secret language. They live in a big old house with a huge tree outside their attic bedroom. Also they have a French Grandmother so they spend their summers in Paris which adds a gorgeous European old world touch to the story and becomes very  important at the end.

Into this idyllic childhood steps a teacher who entices Claire into his car. Elv sees this happen, senses danger and yanks Clair out of the car and goes in her stead. The abuse is never graphically stated but it changes Elv and the whole family's life for ever. Various kinds of personal tragedy follows the girls in their teen years. Elv becomes an addict and absconder, and is taken to a rehab centre. Claire and Meg try and make sense of the separateness they feel from her and each other after that day. Meg is never told about what happens and the secrecy of the event really hurts the family, as mother is never told either.

I was really taken by this book, the light hand which describes the story intrigues and reveals little by little the depth of love that can happen between siblings and within a family.
Hoffman has written many novels and on the strength of this one I will investigate her other ones. Well worth a read.

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The Forgotten Highlander | Alistair Urquart

How much can humans endure? This is a book which should be compulsory reading for everyone over 12. Alistair Urquart is a Scottish lad, from the Highlands, he gets called up and goes to war. I heard of him being interviewed on Radio New Zealand on the 27th of July and was astounded by him as a person. He's over 90 years old and has been telling his story to as many as he can in schools and international interviews, so that what he went though with thousands of others won't be forgotten.

After basic training they were shipped to Singapore through the Suez Canal. For most men it was the first time overseas and it seemed like a huge adventure. Urquart often comments on how young they were and how naive. There is a sense that these lads were a small cog in a very big war machine.
Singapore fell to the Japanese, and Urquart was taken prisoner. After a few months in Selarang Barracks prison camp he was shipped to Hellfire Pass. The Burma Railway was being built at huge human cost well beyond anything the Allies were aware of. They built a bridge over the River Kwai (and it was nothing like the movie!) The abuse of the POW's by the Japanese is hard to imagine. Physically exhausted, starved and beaten they worked for months on end breaking rock and cutting a path through the jungle.It is unbearable, but Urquart survived.

As the war turned against the Japanese they took POWs by ship back to Japan. As luck would have it, Urquart's ship was torpedoed and sunk. He survived on wreckage for a week or so and was picked up by a second Japanese ship. Other soldiers were fortunate enough to be picked up by American ships and news got out of what they had suffered in the POW camps of the jungle.

Urquart was deposited in the prison camp close to the city of Nagasaki...One day when he was out in the camp doing work outside he felt a strong blast of hot air. The men were mystified. Then they were rescued by American soldiers and on their way to the waiting ships they were covered in fine dust that seemed to be everywhere...The Bomb made history.

The mental and emotional scars that soldiers came home with are humanely described and he is a remarkable man to have survived. He marries and has children and goes on to have a remarkable life.
One of the things which has motivated him to tell his story after sixty years of silence is Japan's denial of what went on in the building of the railway and the part they played in WWII. He is appalled and is fighting the denials which are an insult to the thousands of British, Australia and Canadian men who lived and died in utter horror.

I highly recommend this book as an encouraging and up lifting read; the resilience of the human spirit, the discovery of strength and faith.

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The Return of Captain John Emmett | Elizabeth Speller

This book took me by surprise in it's depth and how widely ranging the story goes. It is set in and just after WWI. The main character, Laurence Bartram returns from the war to find his young wife and infant son dead. He tries to hide away by writing a book on London churches and does not successfully engage with life after war. 

Then Mary Emmett enters his life- he knew her brother. Laurence is asked to investigate why John Emmett killed himself after the war. We meet some interesting characters, learn about the realities of trench warfare and shell shock. Many young men were destroyed by simply being in the war in Europe and this book in a way pays homage to those who suffered great emotional ill.

I really enjoyed reading it because the characters were drawn in such a way that I cared about what happened to them. The plot is interesting and a bit of a who-done-it, of a gentle and intellectual manner rather than a modern graphic nature. Speller is very talented and can tell a very plausible story so I will find her other two books and read those too. Well worth reading. 

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The Return of Captain John Emmett