The Water Beetles

by Michael Kaan

The Leung family leads a life of secluded luxury in Hong Kong. But in December 1941, the Empire of Japan invades the colony. The family is quickly dragged into a spiral of violence, repression, and starvation. To survive, they entomb themselves and their friends in the Leung mansion. But this is only a temporary reprieve, and the Leungs are forced to send their children away.

The youngest boy, Chung-Man, escapes with some of his siblings, and together they travel deep into the countryside to avoid the Japanese invaders. Thrown into a new world, Chung-Man befriends a young couple who yearn to break free of their rural life. But their friendship ends when the Japanese arrive, and Chung-Man is once again taken captive. Unwittingly and willingly, he enters a new cycle of violence and punishment until he finally breaks free from his captors and returns to Hong Kong.

Deeply scarred, Chung-Man drifts along respectfully and dutifully, enveloped by the unspoken vestiges of war. It is only as he leaves home once again this time for university in America that he finally glimpses a way to keep living with his troubled and divided self.

Written in restrained, yet beautiful and affecting prose, The Water Beetles is an engrossing story of adventure and survival. Based loosely on the diaries and stories of the author's father, this mesmerizing story captures the horror of war through the eyes of a child with unsettling and unerring grace.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Canada, Fiction, War, Asia, Literary Fiction, Adult Fiction

350 pages, Paperback

First published April 11, 2017

Reviews

[Alice Poon · Rating 3 out of 5]

If I am not mistaken, this novel is the first fictional work that is based on events of the 1941 Japanese invasion of Hong Kong and the subsequent occupation that lasted three years and eight months. The author says in “Acknowledgments” that the book draws on his father’s memoirs and most of the core incidents in the narrative are based on real events.

Being a Hong Kong native, I have obvious personal reasons for picking up this book, as my mother in her childhood had watched her mother being killed by a Japanese bomb, and my paternal grandparents and parents and relatives and teachers had lived through hell in those harrowing years. I previously read two non-fiction books that are based on eye-witness accounts: Not the Slightest Chance: The Defence of Hong Kong 1941 and The Lasting Honour: The Fall of Hong Kong 1941, and, while growing up, had heard tidbits from the older generation, so I have an idea of what had happened. It was with a heavy heart that I went into this new novel.

I won’t go into the plot for fear of revealing too much. My gut reaction to the novel is that the first three-quarters are a bit slow-paced, and the intermittent flash-forwards seem sudden and disjointed in relation to the main storyline. But the last quarter packs a powerful punch, and some episodes are hair-raisingly brutal. As for the writing, the words and some turns of phrases are meticulously woven and emotive, but strangely enough, in general I found rapport lacking.

Having said that, the novel is still an important work in the sense that it sends out a stinging reminder to the world we live in: that human brutalities kill the souls if not the bodies of surviving victims of wars. Deep emotional wounds may never heal. It has helped me understand better why my mother would never talk about her experiences in the war.

World War Two novels are typically about events on the European battlefields. Atrocities that plagued Asia have been largely ignored by mainstream publishing. Kaan’s novel fills a glaring gap in this genre of historical fiction, and hopefully will inspire other similar works.

I’m giving the novel 3.4 stars, rounded down.

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Allison · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very well written, very heavy, very learned and informative. I don't know that I enjoyed reading Water Beetles -- it was so horrific to learn of the living nightmare experience of the Chinese at the hands of the occupying Japanese -- but I'm very grateful to Michael Kaan for bringing this story to my attention. It's history that I don't, as a Canadian, have much knowledge about. We get so much European and North American history growing up, but there's so much more to the world that we don't get taught. I believe it's our moral duty to aim to learn more, widen our scope of knowledge, and this book helps with that.

I'll definitely be seeking out Kaan's next book. He's a strong and competent writer who so effectively communicates the *feels* of his characters' experience. This war story is told from the ground, the very bottom of the war, from the people, and it's such an intimate way to write about such horrors. These characters will be staying with me for a long time, I can tell.

[Krista · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm watching the beetle. Not the beetle I wish I was, but the bigger one who wants to kill it. Mine is golden-green, small and easy to spot. Just behind it is the larger one with a shiny, deep-black carapace, so black it seems to drink the light right from my eyes. The big one hasn't struck mine yet, it's only watching, and it tastes the air ahead to see when it should act. I can see it will strike and win, and the beetle I wish I was will die. Like everyone else, it is at war, which means its every move is inevitable and prescribed.

The Water Beetles reminded me of The Narrow Road to the Deep North: like Richard Flanagan before him, author Michael Kaan took his father's real-life account of harrowing experiences during WWII, and by crafting a narrative that dips in and out of the timeline of an entire life, Kaan is able to show how such early experiences shape, and wound, a person forever. As a meditation on memory and personhood, I found The Water Beetles to be serious and deep. As a WWII story that I hadn't heard before, I found it to be informative and gripping. What more could I have asked for?

Looking back into the past is a lonely game of self-delusion, watching people and events move with an inevitability that never was. The history books tell everything with such certainty. But at the time, nothing seemed inevitable to me. Some things were impossible or unlikely, some things expected, but most of all, beyond the routine of daily life, the world was a mystery. We knew little until it happened.

In the opening scene, the narrator, twelve-year-old Chung-Man, is on a forced march with some of his family members; weary, starving, and in constant fear of the Japanese soldiers with their guns and bamboo switches. After this brief opener, the story rewinds to introduce Chung-Man as a child of privilege; a rich man's son living in Hong Kong, with maids and a driver, a tailor dressing the boy for British-styled private school. We meet the entire family over the next several chapters, always having in mind which of them were POWs in the opening scene, and there's a satisfying narrative tension as the reader wonders what happened to everyone else. As the narrative also jumps ahead to Chung-Man's present and stories from his adult life, there are hints about who will survive (including, obviously, Chung-Man himself), and this doesn't lessen the tension: I needed to know how everyone mentioned got from there to here. As the Japanese invade Hong Kong, I was fascinated by the British army's fast capitulation of its colony (but, to be fair, I hear they were otherwise engaged by the war), and as Chung-Man is led into hiding in the Chinese countryside, I was riveted by how easy it seemed to be for Japan to bomb and march their way to a seemingly unopposed victory over the much larger country. I didn't know much of anything about this history, and this story was an education. (As per Flanagan's book, the Japanese soldiers are particularly cruel to their POWs – I cringed at scenes of stragglers being shot in the head; starving children forcing down spoiled food; women hiding in the stinking latrine from the midnight visits of their drunken captors.)

Knowing I'll die soon doesn't bother me. There's too much to be unburdened of, the indignity and pain. The fact is that the long contest against death is relatively easy; you win every day, no matter how, until you lose. You know who holds the prize each night when you hit that pillow.

What troubles me is the struggle to stay continuous, to be a single person over time. How can I be certain it was really me who emerged from the boy in the horse farm, or from the one who carried the buckle? He doesn't feel like the same person sometimes. Part of me is still back there, looking into the future as a mystery instead of the crumbling pile it is to me now.

And The Water Beetles would have been a worthy read if it were only a history lesson, but the older Chung-Man's philosophising about the perceived inconstancy of personhood over a lifetime really affected me; Kaan captures something unique and important with these bits. I wouldn't have picked this up if it hadn't been a finalist for the Governor General's Award for Fiction, and having now read it, I'm surprised it didn't win; at a minimum, it deserves to be more widely read.

[Kathleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars

"War is a hammer in its opening act. The invader brings it down and everyone is stunned to see buildings fall, roads blown open to expose the primitive earth beneath their feet. It's as if people don't believe their world can be destroyed.
In the second act, a strange, corrupted underlay of normalcy emerges from the broken world. The trees and wind still smell the same, there's no change in the weather or birdsong. Then suddenly, even when things seem peaceful, the smell of scorched buildings or rotting flesh blows in. Guns fire randomly near and far. Shots ring out and there's no reply, no ambulance siren, no firing back."
p 59,60

I finished reading The Water Beetles by Canadian author Michael Kaan. It was a Buddy Read with three Goodreads friends, and thoughts of Ukraine stayed with us. This well-written novel is loosely based on the memoirs and oral stories of the author's father, who was nine-years-old when the Japanese invaded Hong Kong in December 1941.
The story is written in first person from Chung-Man's point of view, mostly as a twelve-year-old boy, but occasionally as an adult. Initially the time changes irked me, but I soon appreciated them as they added to the story and prepared me for what was coming later.
I enjoy learning while I am reading books. Midden is now a new word in my vocabulary. It means a dung hill or a refuse heap. Before reading this novel, I knew little about this period of history in Hong Kong.
I was totally engaged with Chung-Man and his siblings as they struggled to stay alive during the brutality of the Japanese occupation.

I admire the kindness of Chung-Man's mother in welcoming strangers into her home and giving them shelter, places to sleep, and feeding them at her table. Only when the house was so crowded that the lives of those within were endangered by the noise, did Mrs. Leung turn people in need away.
I was scared for Chung-Man when he and Ah-Tseng walked to the market to purchase food. On their way back home, I greatly feared for their safety. The cruelty they witnessed was evil.
Shun-Lai did not returned from her trip to the market.
On February 23, 1942 Mrs. Yee, Shun-Po and Shun-Yau left the Leung home for Guangdong. Chow walked with them all the way to Mrs. Yee's sister's home in Wan Chai.

Chung-Man's mother and her two older sons Sheung, and Tang stayed behind while she sent Leuk, Chung-Man, and Wei-Ming with Yee-Lin Leung (Sheung's wife) to go live with their uncle in the countryside in a village called Tai Fo. She thought they would be safer there. They were to go up the Pearl River at night by boat.

They stayed with their uncle and aunt for a while, but after accidentally witnessing an execution supervised by the magistrate, who was their uncle, the children had restless nights and had trouble sleeping. Yee-Lin and the aunt didn't get along well, and when Yee-Lin learned of the hanging, they decided to run away.

I will not share any more of the story because I want you to read the book!

This Canadian author is new to me, so I "googled" him. His father is from Hong Kong and his mother is from Canada. He was born in Canada. Michael Kaan has worked as a healthcare administrator since 2000, primarily in mental health and health research.

Many passages in this debut novel caught my eye.

"Looking back into the past is a lonely game of self-delusion, watching people and events move with an inevitability that never was."
p 66

"More and more it was becoming my habit to see one thing and envision another, to transform the world's images as they opened up to me. Until now I never knew I had this ability – not to change the world, but to remake and reduce it to my vanished world of gardens and schoolyards, of the kitchen and the library. And then nothing might be remembered, only retold. For there are times when we absorb the world as we grow and learn about it, but others when we make a dark exchange with it, casting out memories, pocketfuls of time, and future selves as its brutality marched into our lives."
p 116

"I felt overloaded and burdened, and my head ached. My brain was turning into a crowded landscape of pictures and sounds, and my own thoughts were becoming indistinguishable from the noise I absorbed from the world around me. I felt exposed, unable to conceal my chaotic inner world."
p 122

"Living memory is barren: it has no descendants or inheritors. It is a reservoir from which no channel can be struck."
p 131

"Everything I knew seemed far away. My memory of the city was flattening, as if into the pages of a photo album; it seemed a colder place, cracking under the thunder of war, where the air was stricken by smoke and disembodied cries. I didn't miss it, if I didn't think too much about my family."
p 177

After his wife, Alice, died Chung-Man writes:
"Obviously I just wanted to be dead. But what is the point of admitting that? It is easier at times to be a pallid vessel of events and memories, rather than the bearer of a life. And in grief, I felt I must now bear the weight of two lives if hers was not to disappear completely, but never felt competent to do it."
p 234

"There's another boy I always wish I could console, although I failed to. Strange to feel so powerless, like Mrs. Yee at our old dinner table. It's the boy I was then. He shouldn't exist anymore. He should have faded away with my teens, as my teenage self should have faded into adulthood, leaving me unburdened, with just my eighty-six-year-old self to worry over.
But the boy I was still feels real and separate. He's there still, always near me but just out of reach. He waits, wanting to be taken home. And I have to sit and watch him, knowing there's nothing I can do."
p 236

"What troubles me is the struggle to stay continuous, to be a single person over time. How can I be certain it was really me who emerged from that boy in the horse farm, or from the one who carried the buckle? He doesn't feel like the same person sometimes. Part of me is still back there, looking into the future as a mystery instead of the crumbling pile it is to me now. He could appear suddenly in the playground outside with my face and name, thin and dressed and ranks, and I'd accept he was a separate person. I think he still wonders whether he won or lost that fight and asks how much longer he'll prevail."
p 293

"But I stayed standing on the open deck, and my body, heart, and memory fought each other once again, as I knew now they always would."
p 352

[Shawn Mooney (Shawn Breathes Books) · Rating 3 out of 5]

In this tale—based on his father's memoir—Kaan chronicles the harrowing experiences of a Hong Kong boy trying to survive the Japanese invasion and WW2. Child narrators present pitfalls, but this point of view is deftly handled here. Too, there are many, many simply written scenes of much power. But the novel needed paring, shaping, and it sputters and stalls almost every time the prose grasps for metaphor, image, or more flowery language.

[Cathrine ☯️ · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 ★★★

[Carmel Hanes · Rating 4 out of 5]

"War is a hammer in its opening act. The invader brings it down and everyone is stunned to see buildings fall, roads blown open to expose the primitive earth beneath their feet. It's as if people don't believe their world can be destroyed. In the second act, a strange, corrupted underlay of normalcy emerges from the broken world. The trees and wind still smell the same, there's no change in the weather or birdsong. Then suddenly, even when things seem peaceful, the smell of scorched buildings or rotting flesh blows in. Guns fire randomly near and far. Shots ring out and there's no reply, no ambulance siren, no firing back."

Reading these words, one could believe I was reading a book about Ukraine; our current news and reality made this group read more difficult, more pertinent, more disheartening, knowing it is being repeated in new places with new people. Kaan chronicles a Hong Kong family in the throes of Japanese occupation during WWII, the displacement, the attempt to survive challenging and dangerous circumstances, the traumatic events that irrevocably change people, and the determination to survive it all.

"My memory of the city was flattening, as if into the pages of a photo album; it seemed a colder place, cracking under the thunder of war, where the air was stricken by smoke and disembodied cries."

"...the illness, the injury, the damage, whatever it was, wasn't hers alone. It was something that I shared intimately with her, that I recognized like the sound of my own heart in my ears, and I recoiled. Knowing that Tat-Choy couldn't possibly understand this, and maybe shouldn't, I stammered that only the doctors at the hospital could help her."...

"My banality was a facade. He stared at me as I revealed the depth of his mother's suffering and her distance from the world to which he always thought she belonged."

There were moments of true horror in the story, horror we have seen repeatedly in times of war around the world. But, the majority of the story was less intense and more focused on the day to day observations of what was happening around them, the decisions to be made, the hardships endured when life suddenly rotates out of control, and the eventual outcomes for members of this family.

The story had sudden shifts in time as the narrator moved from recalling long-ago events to more recent ones. At first I found this clumsy and a bit disorienting, but as I acclimated to it, I found it offered hints that became relevant with additional reading.

[Rachel · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was painful. There is something about the author's style that just doesn't work for me. For the majority of this short novel, I was bored stiff. Then, there were a few sections that really captured the brutality and ugliness of war that, while they weren't excessively graphic, were so brutal in contrast to the rest of the writing, that they literally made me nauseated.

The author jumps around in time, too, without warning and in a way that doesn't make sense. In many of the chapters, the present-day or near present day reflections seem to have no connection to the wartime narrative in that same chapter. Perhaps I'm simply not smart enough to make the connections, but I tried.

I had hoped for something as compelling as the film Empire of the Sun. I expected to have my heart wrenched out. I expected tears and I hoped for an ending that would leave me with hope. Instead, I was left cold.

[Megan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed reading this book and learning more about the occupation of China during WWII.

This book was told as flashbacks, which I am grateful for. The only way I could get through reading about the past was the promise that the main character and his family survive what happened to them.

[Djj · Rating 5 out of 5]

Short and superb novel based on the experiences of the author's grandfather's boyhood in southern china during the japanese occupation in ww2. The story is brutal but beautifully told. The observations are profound. Could/should be a contender in Canada Reads this year. Highly recommended.

[Mary Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book that is hard to read, about the violence of displacement in times of war. It is well written with just enough time shifting to alleviate the horror of the cruelty of soldiers to civilians, women and children alike.

[Jane Broadribb · Rating 3 out of 5]

semi- biographical hard to imagine story about Chinese prisoners during the Japanese invasion of China... children... sometimes I lose heart at the lack of humanity in humans... we are often a mighty and terrible species.

[Patsey]

Hard to read. I needed to take lots of breaks.
P. 236
“There’s another boy I always wish I could console, although I’ve failed to. Strange to feel so powerless, like Mrs. Yee at our old dinner table. It’s the boy I was then. He shouldn’t exist anymore. He should have faded away with my teens, as my teenaged self should have faded away into adulthood, leaving me unburdened, with just my eighty-six-year-old self to worry over.
But the boy I was still feels real and separate. He’s there still, always near me but just out of reach. He waits, wanting to be taken home. And I have to sit and watch him, knowing there’s nothing I can do.”

[Daknees57 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Devastating story of the author's father's experience as a young boy in Hong Kong during WWII. Beautifully written. Heartbreaking.

[Jc · Rating 4 out of 5]

I grew up listening to my grandparents talk about the horrors of living in occupied China during World War II. My parents were both born during the war and I cannot imagine what deprivation they endured though I know that my mother will not eat sweet potatoes because they remind her of the starvation that she experienced as a child.

This is probably the only book that I have read that deals with the story of the Chinese under the occupation of the Japanese Imperial Army. The brutality and the many atrocities that the Chinese were subjected to are familiar to me, both as the descendant of survivors of this time and also as a history teacher.

I'll be honest. It took me a long time to get through this book and it is not a long read. There were moments of violence where I just had to put the book down. I'm not suggesting that there aren't worse examples of violence in other novels; it just felt too real for me since these were the stories of suffering that I listened to as a child.

The book is well written and the suffering of the children is relentless. When you know the history of Hong Kong during this period and you can see where they are geographically and historically, you know that these children will be victimized and their childhoods forever scarred by what they see. Most people know about the war crimes committed in Europe; an increasing number of people are now aware that there were terrible crimes against humanity committed in various parts of Asia against Asians as well as European expats who were living in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, etc.

I'll leave my review here. This is Kaan's first novel and I hope that he keeps writing. This is an imperfect novel but an important one nevertheless.

[Mamavi64 · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was absolutely wonderful. I couldn't stop reading it but then I also didn't want it to end. I have read many different books from many different perspectives of World War 2. This was one that I had never read about. It's sad, it's beautiful, it's thoughtful and heart wrenching. What a powerful way to share his father's story with the world. A must read !

[Jan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Water Beetles is a very powerful book based somewhat on the author's father's experiences during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong. Resilience and commitment help to mitigate the brutality of Chung- Man and his family's life during this time, but its a stark read nonetheless.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tightly written, clean prose with a progression that kept drawing me into this world. The sharp imagery stays with me.

[Heike Lettrari · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book tells the very compelling story of the Leung family's survival through the eyes of the children, a boy, in particular, after Japan invades Hong Kong during World War II. The children make a variety of short-lived, often difficult relationships with the people they encounter after the invasion, fleeing their city and the Japanese, and then being captured by the Japanese. These children see things that no one should ever see, and bear witness to some of the cruelest aspects of war and the drunkenness of power and poor decisions.

I'd add one line of caution -- some of the description is very stark, though straightforward, about the violence (both physical and emotional) of war. I still think back to some of the most vivid passages where I experience horror that children were seeing these things and going through them, and the scars they take forward with them are so understandable -- I don't think it's possible to read this book without being scarred a bit yourself, and feeling galvanized about the determination never to see war come to our towns and cities. I remain a steadfast pacifist who cannot support war, given the crimes against civilians, after this book.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having read many WW11 books, The Water Beetles gives an entirely different perspective - when the Japanese invade Hong Kong in 1941. Written by a Canadian it is based on his father’s memoirs and oral stories from the Second World War and although it is a fictionalized account, the core incidents are based on real events. I heard Michael Kaan speak many years ago - probably 2017 when the book was released. I bought it then as I must have thought the story interesting. (I’m only sorry I didn’t read it right away when the story that Michael told would have been fresh in my mind). Since then, I picked it up many times and put it down again; I’m glad I stuck with it this time because it is a very interesting story told from the perspective of 12 year old Chung-Man. (Michael’s father was only 9 during this time). It is a very different way of realized what happened in one part of Asia during WW11 which we tend to think of just happening in our realm of Europe and the UK. Many Asians lost their lives and endured great tragedy which is reflected in this story - hardships that endured through a family’s lifetime.

[Lezley · Rating 3 out of 5]

A citizen from Lille from "The Alice Network"
"Those who have never suffered an enemy invasion in their own land, can never understand what war truly is".

In the turmoil of our present political climate, this book written in 2017 tells a sobering story. An upper class Hong Kong Chinese family and especially the young hero, Chung Man, suffer as the Japanese storm and occupy their city. It's a tale of going from comfort to suffering, having plenty and having nothing, having a home and being homeless, being loved and losing loved ones. And it's a tale about how that painful experience affects the lives of those who survived.
Michael Kaan found his father's diary written during WWII and he used this as the basis for his novel.
I think my imagination took over as I foresaw all kinds of possible atrocities which I expected to occur. Fortunately, I was spared my worst nightmare.

[kp · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kaan's exploration of war from the point of view of a 12-year-old Chinese boy caught up in the Japanese occupation is engaging, upsetting, and occasionally beautiful. Kaan manages moments in which he limns well the ways in which trauma taints those who survive it, and I did often find myself reading just one more chapter when I ought to have gone to bed. Still, I would say that while it is likely to add to one's historical knowledge and while it offers us a subject for whom we feel great pity, it doesn't come close to best war novels, including David Malouf's The Great World, which covers some of the same historical ground but in a way that asks more searching questions about the nature and cost of suffering and about the tragic mechanics of nationalism.

[Jo-Ann Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very compelling read, I couldn't put it down. Here the story of a wealthy Chinese youth, living in Hong Kong, when the Japanese invade, commandeering food, water and homes. My dad had been in WW II but in the European theatre of war. He would never return there and rarely spoke of it. So it's even more significant when the war is right in your own back yard, as it was for the Chinese. Kaan handles it with incredible strength by describing the scenes of war, what is has done to others and how the lead character Chuang-Man is immediately and forever affected. I look forward to what he produces next. God bless him.

[Steven Buechler · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of these books that takes a element from the history pages and gives readers a much more in-depth understanding of the events that occurred. Kaan has crafted the memories of his father into the story of Chung-Man Leung, who is coming of age in December 1941. Chung-Man’s life is comfortable and he is curious about the world around him but the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong throws his existence into turmoil as he and his family are faced with a trove of violence and repression.



https://pacifictranquility.wordpress....

[Enid Wray · Rating 5 out of 5]

Devastating. Illuminating. Must read.
This is an horrific novel… but oh so necessary. The author lays bare the vivid reality of the fact of a war… the horror of a war.
Some of the scenes are painted so vividly - evidencing such brutality - as to have me feeling almost sick to my stomach while reading, and having to stop reading, take a break.
Yet, there is also the tenderness - and the comedy, albeit often black - of everyday life, and of family, and community.
A beautifully rendered coming of age story set against the backdrop of one of the most brutal occupations the world has known.

[Brenda · Rating 4 out of 5]

The fictionalized story of a young boy and his family in occupied Hong Kong, Not a subject I'm familiar with. Based loosely on the diaries of the author's father. Touching, heartbreaking. Another look at the atrocities that humans commit on one another. Not a perfect book though. I felt the ending was lacking in substance. Also, it would have helped to know more about how the protagonist overcame his childhood nightmare at various stages of adulthood.

[Dorothy Mahoney · Rating 5 out of 5]

How 12 year old Chung-Man, his older brother Leuk, sister Wei-Ming, his mother and older brothers survive the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong is brutally graphic and haunting.
The snakes in baskets in the basement and the water beetles climbing the sugar cane become
metaphorical in a story of being caged and escaping, often through the kindness of strangers.

[Margarita · Rating 3 out of 5]

In his novel, Kaan writes about a part of history uncommonly explored and he does so with poise and grace.  At its core, this is a story about survival.   The timeframe alternates between past and present with transitions feeling a little uneven at times.  I found myself always longing to return back to the adventures and life-changing experiences of Chung-Man’s youth.

[Leslie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A moving novel about war and survival and trauma, based upon the author's father's experiences after the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong. I did think the first two chapters, set in 1935 and 1936, should have been cut; the real story starts in chapter 3 in the fall of 1941 as rumours of invasion start to invade the author's privileged life as the youngest son of a very wealthy family in Hong Kong.