Sisters Under the Rising Sun by Heather Morris tells the story of a group of women imprisoned in a Japanese camp in Indonesia during World War Two. Morris is a new author for me. I chose the book because of the subject matter and my memory of Tenko on television in the Eighties, which made a big impression on me. Only later did I discover the same author wrote The Tattooist of Auschwitz. As the Japanese army invades Singapore in 1942, families and nurses flee on ships only to be attacked, shipwrecked and washed up on a remote Indonesian island. There are two main groups of women, Sister Nesta and her group of Australian nurses, and English sisters Norah and Ena and other civilian women and children. All arrive at the camp traumatised, weak, dehydrated, under-nourished and terrified. Loved ones missing or drowned or shot, isolation from everything familiar, fearing death at any moment. This is a traumatic tale and I stuck with it early on as the subject is interesting despite, emotionally, feeling a step away from what was happening. The third-person viewpoint is distant, wandering from Nesta to Norah and quickly back again when I really wanted to know their inner thoughts, the things they weren’t saying out loud.
The women are separated from the men and Norah’s sick husband John is taken to a different camp. Their daughter Sally was evacuated earlier from Singapore and Norah can only hope Sally is safe with her aunt. This is a story of female support, friendship, bravery and determination in the face of despair, cruelty, deprivation, filth and disease. The women get settled into a camp, organise, clean, work out systems to survive and to support each other, but no sooner are they settled than without warning they are moved again to another rat-infested filthy camp. The story is linear which, given we know the outcome and timeline of the war, is natural, but there was little suspense about the outcome of key characters. I particularly enjoyed the musical sections about Norah’s voice orchestra and would have appreciated more of this, particularly from individual singers.
I’ve read many novels now that are ‘based on a true story’ which have left me feeling vaguely disappointed. Does true history in some way shackle the writer’s imagination? This only seems to happen with novels based on relatively recent true history, as if there is a sub-conscious duty to tell the truth at the sacrifice of fiction. It doesn’t seem to happen with historical fiction that is based centuries ago.
A fascinating subject, the true story of these women really was horrendous.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK AT AMAZON

If you like this, try:-
‘Our Friends in Berlin’ by Anthony Quinn
‘Day’ by Al Kennedy
‘The Bird in the Bamboo Cage’ by Hazel Gaynor

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview SISTERS UNDER THE RISING SUN by Heather Morris https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-7zB via @SandraDanby

COMING SOON… THE NEXT BOOK I REVIEW WILL BE:-