Guest review by Helena Pielichaty: THE LAST BOAT OUT OF SHANGHAI by Helen Zia

 

"The broken paths are still being trodden, not mended. That is why stories like this are so important and need to be told."

Helena Pielichaty is a children’s writer. She has had over thirty books published, mainly by Oxford University Press and Walker Books. More on her website. 

Although there have been other works set around Shanghai during the turbulent 1930s-1950s, such as J G Ballard’s Empire of the Sun (1984) and Lilane Willens’ Stateless in Shanghai (2010), Helen Zia is the first to tell the story from a Chinese perspective. During an interview following the publication of Last Boat Out of Shanghai, the Chinese-American author, academic and activist declared: ‘There isn’t a single book in English about this; not even a dissertation.’

By ‘this’ she means what she calls ‘the forgotten exodus’ when, during the late 1940s, Shanghai became the epicentre for tens of thousands of people fleeing both the city and Chairman Mao Tse-Tung’s Communist regime. The book is the result of twelve years of meticulous research, including hundreds of hours of interviews with survivors, most of whom were in their seventies and eighties by then.

It is divided into four parts: ‘The Drumbeat of War’ (covering 1937), ‘Childhood under Siege’ (1939-1947) ‘Exodus’ (1948-1949) and ‘War’s Long Shadow’ (1949 -1957). Zia focuses on four of the interviewees: Benny Pan, Ho Chow, Bing Woo and Annabel Annuo Liu, beginning in 1937 when the Japanese took control of parts of Shanghai by force. Like all good non-fiction, Last Boat Out of Shanghai reads like fiction; and gripping fiction at that.

We are introduced first to Benny, a nine-year old boy with ‘unruly black hair, his knee socks bunched at the ankles.’ Benny is the favoured son of social-climbing parents, who, thanks to his father’s connections as an officer in the police auxiliary, enjoy a comfortable life-style. Like Jim in Ballard’s Empire of the Sun, Benny has learned to cycle past the dilapidated shacks and squalid tenements ‘reeking of raw sewage’ and to look the other way if he sees a dead body.

Next, we meet Ho, an earnest 13-year-old: ‘lanky, bedraggled and bewildered’ who has accompanied his grandmother to the ‘safety’ of the city, mistakenly thinking, like many others, that Shanghai, with its foreign concessions populated by Americans, British, French, Russian Jews and - since 1941 - German Jews, would offer protection. On Ho’s shoulders rests the fate of his family’s future; he must not let them down.

Then we have eight-year-old ‘Bing’ formerly known as ‘Little Sister’ before her poverty-stricken father sold her two years earlier. She was re-named Bing by her new ‘Mama’, whom she had grown to love but who now appears to have deserted her, just like Baba had. A new home beckons in Shanghai with a different ‘mama’ - Miss Woo - and Miss Woo’s foul-tempered mother. Numbly, Bing awaits her fate.

Finally, there is Annuo, barely two years old. Annuo has a big brother, Charley, who swears to protect her from the incessant bombs, and a doting mother who is a trained physician. Of her father, Yongchio, away fighting for the Republic of China’s Nationalist Party, she is less certain. She senses he has an antipathy towards her for some reason and she is right. This antipathy grows as Annuo does; Yongchio’s anger flaring at every perceived wrong doing and any spark of independence.

Zia follows these four people’s shared histories for two decades. I learned so much about Chinese and Shanghai's culture, family hierarchies, food, the vibrant street life, and the volatile politics. Yet one of the hardest parts to read about is the period during the 1950s, when, having witnessed so much cruelty and overcome all kinds of odds to reach safety, Benny, Bing, Ho and Annuo then have to endure further hostility in their new countries. Those bound for America, especially, arrive at a time when Senator McCarthy’s ‘Reds under the Beds’ hysteria had whipped up suspicion and prejudice against any Chinese refugee, regardless of their background and political affiliations.

In the epilogue Zia concludes ‘…If told often enough, one day such stories may become lessons for historical reflection, not broken paths to be retrod.’ I’d like to think so, too, but given what happened during a recent, similar ‘exodus’ – that of Afghans fleeing the Taliban in 2021 - the broken paths are still being trodden, not mended. That is why stories like this are so important and need to be told.

The Last Boat out of Shanghai is published by Ballantine Books.

MISS BENSON'S BEETLE by Rachel Joyce, reviewed by Linda Newbery

 

"Rachel Joyce has a gift for expressing profound truths with simple directness."

Linda Newbery edits Writers Review. She has published widely for young readers, with titles including Set in Stone, a young adult novel which won the Costa Children's Book Prize. Titles for younger readers include Lob and The Brockenspectre. Her latest publication, This Book is Cruelty Free: Animals and Us is a guide to compassionate living, looking at the choices we make in our everyday lives and how they affect animals and the environment.

This was a recent choice (someone else's) for my reading group, and I was drawn to it for several reasons. I'd greatly enjoyed The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Rachel Joyce's first novel, and The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessey even more, with its deeply poignant, revelatory ending. I love stories about exploration, discovery and the natural world, and when you add two highly memorable characters, a mystery, a troubled war veteran and Rachel Joyce's characteristic warmth and insight, this was a winner. And only when reaching the Afterword did I learn that the sparking-point for the novel was a photograph that intrigued me when I saw it at Kelmscott Manor a few years ago; it shows May Morris, William Morris's daughter, with her companion Mary Lobb, with whom she travelled widely. These two women are transformed in Rachel Joyce's imagination into unlikely travelling partners Margery Benson and Enid Pretty, setting off for New Caledonia to discover a golden beetle that's so far been reported but never captured or catalogued. 

Impulsively leaving her dull job teaching domestic science, Margery advertises for an assistant, and it's the least apparently suitable, Enid, dressed in pink with yellow candyfloss hair and pink pompom shoes, who joins her on the voyage to Brisbane. They are stalked by young ex-soldier Mundic, who records their activities obsessively and continues tracking them to the remote island of New Caledonia and the northern settlement where they rent a rickety bungalow as the base for their expeditions. Enid thinks she's the one being followed - what does she have in that red valise she always keeps close by, and what happened to the husband she left behind in London? Margery's suspicions gather, and so do those of the stuffy Consul's wife they meet on arrival at the main town.

But the growing friendship becomes vital to both women. It's the irrepressible Enid who keeps Margery going with the quest for the golden beetle when weather, circumstances and physical failings turn against them, and Margery who first humours then supports Enid in her desire to have a baby. There are many memorable moments, such as when they swim in a forest pool and Margery feels a surge of exhilaration: "She stayed, staring up at the thundering cascade of water and dark green pine clumps and, above them, the sky as blue as a piece of glass. And, just for a moment, she could have sworn she heard something inside her, groaning with pleasure ..."

Enid's distaste for killing makes it impossible for Margery to convince her that three of the golden beetles, if found, must be put into her killing jar and preserved as specimens for the Natural History Museum. For the always-practical Margery this is part of her training, although she was sickened years before by her first experience of the process: "She had screwed on the lid. But the beetle would not die quickly, as she'd expected: if flailed and sucked at the burning air, lifting its antennae, cramming its legs at the glass, calling her - or so she imagined - to stop, amazed and appalled at what she was doing after she had taken such care to lift it with her tweezers." A person who could feel and notice so much would never do that to her special golden beetle, would she?

The larger-than-life treatment lends warmth and humour. Rachel Joyce has a gift for expressing profound truths with simple directness, and Margery recognises something similar in her friend: "Sometimes Enid still surprised Margery - the way she could look into the air and come out with a piece of wisdom ..." As events escalate the search for the beetle becomes almost incidental, but several surprises await in the perfectly-judged ending.  

I highly recommend Miss Benson's Beetle - and if you haven't read The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy, that too is not to be missed.

Miss Benson's Beetle is published by Penguin.

Linda Newbery's This Book is Cruelty Free - Animals and Us is published by Pavilion.

SMALL PLEASURES by Clare Chambers, reviewed by Adèle Geras

"A story I haven’t been able to get out of my head since I first picked it up."

Adèle Geras has written books for readers of all ages. Coming from Michael Joseph in February next year is her novel Dangerous Women, published under her pseudonym, Hope Adams.
website: www.adelegerasbooks.com
Twitter: @adelegeras

This novel, which I read about a month ago, is going to end up near the top of my list of Books of the Year, 2020. I would love it if some prize juries put it on shortlists.

It’s Clare Chambers’ first book for a decade and I’m determined to read her entire backlist. On the strength of this novel, I regard her as one of those writers you can trust. After only a few pages you know you’re in good hands. Her prose is sharp, intelligent and witty. It’s lyrical without being sentimental, and she is able to transport a reader instantly to a specific time and a place. Her ear for dialogue is superb. She creates an entire universe: a rather narrow and parochial suburban world which is nevertheless fascinating and whose denizens are as full of emotional turmoil and tormented feelings as anyone in a novel with a flashier setting. Lovers of Barbara Pym and Dorothy Whipple will feel completely at home in this novel, and speaking as someone who was thirteen in 1957, when it’s set, I can promise you that every detail is spot on.

Jean Swinney is a reporter on the local newspaper. She lives with her mother, who is a millstone round her neck. Then a story comes to her attention. A woman is claiming that her ten-year-old daughter is the product of a Virgin Birth. As she follows the story, Jean becomes involved with the family she’s investigating. I shall say no more for fear of spoilers ... the author herself has written of how she based the Virgin Birth part of the plot on a real story in the Sunday Pictorial (see @ClareDChambers on Twitter)

A controversy-ette has sprung up on Twitter about Small Pleasures, but I’m not telling you what that’s about either. What I will say is: this novel is as carefully put together as a Swiss watch, and there’s nothing that hasn’t been thought through. This might sound enigmatic, but you’ll see what I mean when you read the book.

The tasteful picture of tangerines on the cover is not really indicative of the kind of novel it is, but I’m pretty sure that it’s there for a reason. I just hope everyone who isn’t drawn to “that sort of cover” makes their way past it to a story I haven’t been able to get out of my head since I first picked it up.

Small Pleasures is published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson.

THE LIBRARIAN by Salley Vickers, reviewed by Adèle Geras

"Holding it gives real physical pleasure. Since one of the main themes of the novel is the delight that comes from stories, it’s fitting that this should be so..."

Adèle Geras lives in Cambridge and reads a lot. She’s published six novels for adults, the latest of which is Love or Nearest Offer, published in paperback by Quercus. She has also published many books for children and young adults.

Perhaps the first thing to say about this book is that Salley Vickers has been very well served by her publishers. It’s a most beautiful object: bound in eau- de-nil cloth, and with pretty, flower-strewn endpapers. Holding it gives the reader real physical pleasure. Since one of the main themes of the novel is the delight that comes from stories, it’s fitting that this should be so.

Sylvia is a young librarian who moves into a cottage in East Mole and takes up a post as Children’s Librarian. She rents a cottage from Mrs Bird, and from that moment her life is linked with that of the Bird family, and with those of her neighbours in the village. She’s involved with the children, in particular clever Sam and shy, awkward Lizzie. She meets and falls in love with the local doctor, who is married and who has a somewhat wayward daughter called Marigold.

We learn a great deal about the workings of the library, and of how Sylvia draws the local children into reading her own childhood favourites. Not everyone has enlightened ideas, however, and when a copy of Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer goes missing from the Restricted Access shelves, a whole series of events unfolds, at the end of which things in East Mole have changed forever.

I won’t say more about what happens, for fear of spoilers, but I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a tale of ordinary life, told plainly but evocatively. I’d also give it to anyone interested in children’s books, or anyone who believes that the books we read in childhood have the capacity to shape our lives forever. It’s dedicated to Jacqueline Wilson, (who’s been a very good friend of mine for something like 40 years) and Philip Pullman, whom I first met in the early 1990s, so I felt a personal pull to it even before I began reading.

The personal connections continue. One of the friends I’ve made since moving to Cambridge in 2010 is Sally Christie, who is the daughter of Philippa Pearce, who wrote Tom’s Midnight Garden. This astonishing novel, first published in 1958, figures large in The Librarian and is one of Vickers’s own favourites. I am very happy when lines of life and literature converge in this satisfying way.

The Librarian is published by Viking.