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Books in Canada
This terrific tale of love and war opens as narrator Harry Winslow mourns his beloved wife. As a last request, Lily had asked him to contact a friend from the distant past. So Harry leaves Vancouver for Thailand, in search of his wartime comrade, Michel Ney. As the skein of memory unspools in a final, one-sided conversation with Lily, we get to know Harry better than he knows himself.
Harry speaks to his dead wife of his boyhood in Nelson, B.C. He recalls his first job as a merchant seaman, and his voyage on the bombed ship of the title. In British Singapore they meet and fall in love; miraculously, they both survive the occupation. Harry has quite a memory. At times it seems a stretch that he would remember, as he was hiding with Michel from the Japanese in Java, the degrees of hotness in various curries, but food in wartime was so important, and this character is so vividly present, that it works. Curries were the very least of his memorable meals.
The text sparkles and crackles with places and people: shipboard life, nights at Raffles Hotel, years in P.O.W. camps, the Indonesian communists, Japanese occupiers, his fellow prisoners, and always Michel, his saviour. Harry sees everything in close-up, but he so often fails to grasp the big picture that we get exasperated with this surrogate for our own naivete. Wake up, Harry! The people who befriend him, from Eric Shaw, who secures him his first seaman’s job before absconding with his money, to Michel Ney, the experienced fixer, and even Lily, more sophisticated than her spur-of-the-moment groom, are all drawn to his pure affability. When Harry’s vision is blurred by beriberi, it’s the perfect metaphor for a man suffering from mental myopia. The whopper of a secret waiting at the end of his journey makes sense both for Harry and for all marriages. Maybe he should have known. But can we fault a man who not only adored his wife but also worshiped jazz legend Fats Waller? Impossible.
Nancy Wigston (Books in Canada)
Harry speaks to his dead wife of his boyhood in Nelson, B.C. He recalls his first job as a merchant seaman, and his voyage on the bombed ship of the title. In British Singapore they meet and fall in love; miraculously, they both survive the occupation. Harry has quite a memory. At times it seems a stretch that he would remember, as he was hiding with Michel from the Japanese in Java, the degrees of hotness in various curries, but food in wartime was so important, and this character is so vividly present, that it works. Curries were the very least of his memorable meals.
The text sparkles and crackles with places and people: shipboard life, nights at Raffles Hotel, years in P.O.W. camps, the Indonesian communists, Japanese occupiers, his fellow prisoners, and always Michel, his saviour. Harry sees everything in close-up, but he so often fails to grasp the big picture that we get exasperated with this surrogate for our own naivete. Wake up, Harry! The people who befriend him, from Eric Shaw, who secures him his first seaman’s job before absconding with his money, to Michel Ney, the experienced fixer, and even Lily, more sophisticated than her spur-of-the-moment groom, are all drawn to his pure affability. When Harry’s vision is blurred by beriberi, it’s the perfect metaphor for a man suffering from mental myopia. The whopper of a secret waiting at the end of his journey makes sense both for Harry and for all marriages. Maybe he should have known. But can we fault a man who not only adored his wife but also worshiped jazz legend Fats Waller? Impossible.
Nancy Wigston (Books in Canada)
From Publishers Weekly
British Columbian Schroeder takes the reader on an epic journey from contemporary back to WWII Singapore in his debut novel. After Harry Winslow's dying wife reveals that Michel Ney, a war buddy who Harry thought was dead, is in fact alive, Harry begins a quest that will take him to remote Thailand. Spliced in with the contemporary plot is Harry's wild past: as a young marine in Singapore, Harry meets Lily, marries and loses her in a 24-hour period during the Japanese invasion. Harry is captured and sent to a Japanese prison camp, where he meets resourceful Frenchman Michel. The two are split up, and Harry later hears that Michel died while trying to escape from another camp. Harry and Lily reunite after the Japanese surrender (she'd been held in a women's camp), though Harry doesn't know about the painful secret Lily now bears. Chunks are told in an annoying second person, and the lengthy descriptions of flora and fauna suggests an author too eager to show his research, but the narrator's wry sense of humor and a plot loaded with jailbreaks, desperate sea crossings and daring rescues do much to mitigate. Schroeder's first effort is a well-wrought tribute to lives torn apart by war. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.
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