In Malaysia in 1945, near the end of World War II, the Alcantara family is barely hanging on. Matriarch Cecily’s husband Gordon is a shell of his former self, while their beloved teen-aged son Abel has disappeared. Their daughter Jujube tries to maintain some semblance of normality as she works serving occupying Japanese soldiers in a teahouse, while the baby of the family, Jasmin, spends her days hiding in the basement. Cecily herself harbors a secret she desperately hopes her family never discovers–she helped usher in this invasion by working as a spy for Japanese General Fujiwara a decade earlier. Cecily had been lulled in by his pan-Asian message and the hope of overthrowing the colonizing British, but that’s not quite how things panned out.
I’ve been really interested in this book, Chan’s debut novel, since it was first released earlier this year. It’s not a feel-good read by any stretch of the imagination, but it is a fascinating, vivid depiction of an aspect of World War II not often covered in American pop culture.
The POV bounces back and forth between 1945 and the 1930s, contrasting her early espionage idealism with its grim end-results, and rotates between Cecily in both time periods and all 3 of her children in 1945. The characters aren’t always likable, but they are compelling and realistically complex. Chan is also especially good at depicting the claustrophobic social milieu the Alacantras live in. Cecily’s frustration with it is one of her motives for spying–coupled with a frustrated infatuation with Fujiwara–but she still finds herself subject to it and judged by it as her family’s lives fall apart.
If you enjoy thought-provoking, gritty historical fiction with a literary bent, definitely give The Storm We Made a try.
Recommended for those who enjoyed Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko.
*Also available as an ebook in Libby
Have you read The Storm We Made? What’s your favorite novel set during World War II? What are you reading? Tell us in the comments! As always, please follow this link to our online library catalog for more information on any of these items or to place them on hold.
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