The passengers of the Vyner Brooke are pitched from the frying pan to the fire when the ship upon which they have been fleeing the Japanese invasion of Singapore is sunk off the shores of Indonesia. The women and children, musician Norah Chambers and nurse Nesta James among them, must survive in jungle camps until the end of the war.
I am continuing my informal journey through the Pacific theatre of World War 2 with Sisters Under the Rising Sun, which chronicles the lives of a group of British, Australian, and Dutch women living as internees during World War Two. The author is Heather Morris, who I did not realize until later is the writer of those bestselling (and somewhat infamous) chronicles of life at Auschwitz.
It wasn’t until I started reading the book that I realized how heavily the author was drawing on history – all the women were real people, and pretty much all the incidents that happened to them were true. Considering I’d never heard of Norah, Nesta, Margaret, or the others, it was amazing to learn about this little corner of WW2 history. I also appreciated the author’s notes in which we learned more about the broader situation the women were in, and what happened to them afterward.
However, I did feel like the writing was a little emotionally shallow, which made it hard to really get invested. The narration takes a third-person omniscient perspective, which might be why I felt unable to get inside the heads of the characters or really feel their suffering and their triumphs. I also wished we got more of the perspective of the Dutch and Chinese women who were being interned at the camp too, to get a broader feel for the camps.
I read the audiobook version of this book, which is narrated by Laura Carmichael. She did an excellent job, making it easy to distinguish between the voices of the simply enormous cast of women, and adding emotion and levity to her narration where the book calls for it. I was also very pleasantly surprised by the inclusion of performances by the Sydney Women’s Vocal Orchestra throughout the book. With music being such an important component of the story, to be able to hear what the women might have all those years ago at the camp concerts really immersed me in the book.
Disclaimer: I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley. This is my honest and voluntary review.