Monthly Archives: May 2014

I feel a bit fortunate for a few reasons to have come across Eric Lomax’s WWII memoir “The Railway Man,” which was an education of sorts to me. In it he describes his experiences as one of thousands of prisoners-of-war who was forced to work on the ghastly Thailand to Burma railway, which was known as the Railway of Death because so many thousands perished working to build it.

Apparently some of “The Railway Man” was written after Lomax returned from the war and the rest was finished decades later. It was first published in 1995 and though it won a couple of awards in the U.K., I had not heard of it until this year when the movie of it starring Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman was scheduled to be released. The movie’s distribution was limited so I haven’t seen it yet, but from the trailer I’ve seen, it seems to take some poetic license and depart from the book in a few ways.

It’s interesting that Eric Lomax who was Scottish only recently died in October 2012 at age 93 while the film was still in production. His wife though came to its premiere at the Toronto film festival last September and apparently received a standing ovation.

In his book, Lomax describes joining the British army at age 19 in 1939 and eventually being sent to South East Asia where he’s captured by the Japanese army with thousands of others following the surrender of Singapore in 1942. Along with a handful, he’s sent to work in the railway’s workshop repairing machinery for the tracks. But later he and five of the men are swept up after their hidden self-made radio is found and Lomax’s drawn map. He’s interrogated for weeks by Japanese soldiers, beaten up, tortured and confined to imprisonment in squalid conditions.

The scenes of his prisoner-of-war experience are quite vivid, and you get a sense of his inner thoughts about the uncertain, scary situations he endures. I didn’t know about the forced labor on the Burma Railway so the memoir is an eye-opener to that and to the brutal prisoner-of-war camps under the Japanese military.

What’s quite remarkable is that not only does Lomax survive WWII, but many decades later at age 70 he decides to confront his demons about the war, as well as his post-traumatic stress, and his avoidance of seeing Japanese people who he hasn’t faced since 1945. The end of his memoir is a journey into his turnaround, as he seeks professional counseling and falls in love with a woman he meets who becomes his second wife. Eventually with her help, Lomax reaches out to meet one of his torturers during the war who’s still alive in Japan. At first Lomax seeks revenge but soon realizes the man has suffered as well and tried hard to make amends over the many decades. The reconciliation between the two that follows is quite extraordinary some 50+ years later.

It’s a story of humanism, healing and forgiveness in the face of utter brutality that’ll likely stay with me. I plan to follow it up later in the year with the nonfiction award-winning book “The Unbroken” by Laura Hillenbrand, which is similar in its setting and topic. My husband has read it and I know it’s quite earth-shattering. The movie of which is coming out at Christmas.

For now, I’ll be glad knowing that Eric Lomax received some peace towards the end of his life. I’ll look for “The Railway Man” movie, though the trailer made me think the memoir would be much more of a love story than it actually turned out. Lomax talks about his wife and remarriage in the book but he doesn’t delve into it as fully perhaps as the Hollywood version. Also in real life, Lomax was considerably older (in his 70s) when he finally returns to Japan to meet his former enemy, who he’s no longer out to harm. Regardless of when it was, he was incredibly brave to do so.

What about you — have you read either of these books or any other prisoner-of-war accounts? Continue reading →

We had a fun time on our bike trip along British Columbia’s Sunshine Coast and Vancouver Island, which ended on Sunday. We had only one day of rain, and enjoyed smooth roads, good company and pretty scenery. If you ever get a chance, bike touring is a great way to see parts of the world. I think I’ve taken at least one multi-day bike adventure each year for the past 15 years now, and it’s always been illuminating and invigorating in some way or another.

I highly recommend it, and you don’t have to be a bike pro to enjoy it either. I am no pro, just a bike riding enthusiast.

On the trip, I finished Kathleen Winter’s 2010 novel “Annabel,” which was discussed at my book club on Tuesday night. It’s another of those excellent reads that I likely wouldn’t have picked on my own. Chalk it up again to a good book club to broaden one’s book horizons. It definitely gets you out of your usual book-selection mold.

“Annabel’s” about an intersex child (born with both male and female genitalia, which is very rare) in 1968 in a small town in remote coastal Labrador. The child’s parents play traditional roles in the town’s hunting culture; the father is a trapper who spends months away in the wilderness and the mother works around the house. The father decides the baby, who undergoes surgery, will be raised as a boy (Wayne), though the mother secretly wishes the child were a daughter (Annabel). The parents don’t tell the child he was born intersex until something happens much later. Eventually Wayne moves away and stops taking his masculinity medications and begins to accept himself as he is.

It’s a novel that explores gender issues and empathizes with seeing beyond male/female-ness to the humanness of a person. It’s a character study into Wayne, his parents, a trusted neighbor, and the culture into how they view and cope with his intersex situation. I was convinced by the realness of the story and the feel of the town in Labrador. His parents surely have their troubles over his ambiguous circumstances but seem to evolve about it with time. I felt for Wayne and just thought he would’ve acted out more sometimes against the circumstances. He seems so calm in the face of the inner and outer turmoil when at times I felt like it might have been good to scream or throw something off a cliff or fight back against a bully.

It’s a very well-written book though and I felt like I was right there in the characters’ shoes so to speak, as they all go through a transformation of sorts. No wonder it was on the short list for both the Orange and Giller prizes. I definitely will look for the author’s next book once it comes out.

Meanwhile, I’ve picked up “The Railway Man” by Eric Lomax about his life during World War II when he was captured by the Japanese Army and forced to work on the Burma-Siam railway. Lomax died in 2012, but his story is now out as a movie with Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman. I plan to see it once I finish the book.

What about you — have you heard or read either of these books? Or what are you keen on reading these days? Continue reading →