This is an excellent first book with a great story, well worth a read ( )

Set in 1950s Malaya, this novel features a neat reversal of the “traditional” scenario of a child abducted abroad by an estranged parent. Here, a father disenchanted with his wife takes his two daughters back home to England, leaving behind a false trail for their mother to follow. From there we follow the separate lives of the mother and the daughters, each fearing they will never see the other again, but maintaining some tiny hope that they might.

“What happens”, asks the book’s back cover, “when a mother and her daughters are separated?” I am sure you could take from the book some insight into that, but for me what the book demonstrated most ably was the nature of society at that time. The way women were routinely patronised, and neither women nor children were really able to complain about what was happening to them and be believed.

The writing is perfectly competent, not the cartwheeling type that you read for its own sake, but the plot exerts an emotional pull on the reader; there was never any likelihood of this being left unfinished. I liked the the sections set in England best – perhaps because the setting was more familiar, but also I found occasionally in the Malayan sections I would stumble over an apparent non-sequitur in a conversation or some part of the narrative, and no amount of re-reading could rid me of the impression that I had missed several paragraphs of important information.

Overall, a novel that will take you on an emotional journey, and which ultimately delivers what the reader wants. And I have to say the poem included at the end after the author’s notes was quite beautiful. ( )