LoveReading Says
The story begins in 1945, in the context of the Japanese occupiers of Malaya having “killed more people in three years than the British colonisers had in fifty”, at a time “when teenage boys had begun to disappear”.
It’s also a time when all three of Cecily’s children face danger. While her eldest daughter works in a tea house visited by Japanese soldiers, her youngest, Jasmin, has had her hair chopped off and is confined to the basement to keep her safe from predatory men. Into this, her son Abel vanishes on his fifteenth birthday.
Through a second timeline that flips back to 1935, we discover secrets from Cecily’s past, to the time she worked as an informant. As the two narratives meet, tragedy compels Cecily to reconnect with faces from her past, and to confront actions she took some ten years ago.
Stark, lyrical and skilfully woven, The Storm We Made is illuminating on history, and acutely honest on the complex workings of the human heart.
Joanne Owen
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The Storm We Made Synopsis
NATIONAL BESTSELLER * A GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK
In this "espionage-laden family epic" (Vanity Fair), an ordinary housewife becomes an unlikely spy--and her dark secrets will test even the most unbreakable ties. Malaya, 1945. Cecily Alcantara's family is in terrible danger: her fifteen-year-old son, Abel, has disappeared, and her youngest daughter, Jasmin, is confined in a basement to prevent being pressed into service at the comfort stations. Her eldest daughter Jujube, who works at a tea house frequented by drunk Japanese soldiers, becomes angrier by the day.
Cecily knows two things: that this is all her fault; and that her family must never learn the truth.
A decade prior, Cecily had been desperate to be more than a housewife to a low-level bureaucrat in British-colonized Malaya. A chance meeting with the charismatic General Fujiwara lured her into a life of espionage, pursuing dreams of an "Asia for Asians." Ten years later as the war reaches its apex, her actions have caught up with her. Now her family is on the brink of destruction--and she will do anything to save them.
Told from the perspectives of four unforgettable characters,
The Storm We Made spans years of pain, triumph, and perseverance. "The tenderness in its details, the ordinary ways that these characters love and laugh in the face of the extraordinary...Chan shows us, with clarity and care, how the truest mirror comes from the intimacy of human connection" (
The New York Times Book Review).
About This Edition
| ISBN: |
9781668015148 |
| Publication date: |
2nd January 2024 |
| Author: |
Vanessa Chan |
| Publisher: |
S&s/ Marysue Rucci Books |
| Format: |
Hardback |
| Pagination: |
352 pages |
| Primary Genre |
Family Drama
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| Other Genres: |
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