A well-written, moving perspective on imprisonment, World War II and the history of Shanghai.
A survivor of World War II internment recalls cosmopolitan, pre–World War II Shanghai and three years as a prisoner of the Japanese army.
Born in Shanghai to British expats, Blair (Shanghai Scarlet, 2012) spent her early childhood with her brother, parents and Chinese caretakers in the International Settlement, a predominantly British concession within Shanghai. Her memoir opens in 1941, when innocently content 5-year-old Blair is gently woken by Ah Ling, “my nurse, the centre of my life, my Chinese mother.” Readers know Pearl Harbor will be bombed and the world will change, but Blair takes time to paint her life before that in the concession, a “lone islet” or gudao of safety, as well as the bustling “hot din” of Shanghai. As December nears, Blair senses tension, but even after Japanese soldiers seize control of the International Settlement, she fails to comprehend the danger; she writes of Christmas cake and receiving a new doll. Throughout her memoir, Blair maintains this difficult balance of viewpoints. She details historical events (she later studied history at Glasgow University) yet relates her story as a child. In July 1942, Blair’s family is relocated to their first camp, where Blair enjoys a “last, perfect summer” of swimming, her father’s prodigious baking and the relative freedom to roam. Soon, rumors circulate of more dire internment camps, Blair’s father is imprisoned, and Ah Ling returns to Canton. Blair, her mother and brother move to a closely guarded, crowded camp and later to a squalid, dilapidated convent. Through a jury-rigged radio disguised as a toy, prisoners keep tabs on the war, while Blair skillfully builds suspense as camp conditions worsen. Yet she remains a child, knitting dolls’ clothes from unraveled sweaters, re-reading Beatrix Potter and daydreaming of summer vacation. Only as her 9-year-old body grows thin, her mother sick and her father’s fate more tenuous do readers glimpse the lasting effects of war. Young Blair swings obsessively on makeshift parallel bars, each swoop recalling her father: “Is he safe…Is he safe?”
A well-written, moving perspective on imprisonment, World War II and the history of Shanghai.Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2007
ISBN: 978-1425111427
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Trafford
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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