The personal shame and the fear of abandonment from families kept secrets locked tightly in one's heart and in one's psyche. She explained that it wasn’t easy, what he was doing, because the water was shallow and the weeds were holding her up.

The third chapter switches back to 2000 – and a first party character Kevin, a 12 year old boy whose beloved paternal grandmother is dying in hospital. Plot wise, I think this book could be confusing to some as it involves two timelines: Wang Di’s past and present and two different perspectives: Kevin’s and Wang Di’s. For years, they thought that someone might have taken her away but it was hard to look for missing people, especially children, during the war, of course. Kevin tries to solve the puzzle that his grandmother has left him with unintentionally in the present. What is so striking is not just what these women went through during the war, but the shame they experienced as if they had done something wrong rather than having wrong done to them.Most Americans are educated about Pearl Harbor - yet are less familiar with the horrors of what the Japanese military did - and to the extent that women suffered.

Not only did Wang Di face the threat of death should she not comply while enslaved by the Japanese military, but she faced censure from the rest of society after the war ended. Because these are both open to interpretation there isn’t an ‘ending explained’ post which will give you the right answer. But not even this meticulous foregrounding prepares the reader for the visceral power and heartbreak of this exquisitely rendered debut novel. I’d highly recommend this book but do take your time with it, as I said previously, this book is not easy.Lee’s nuanced storyline remarkably blends historical facts, epistles, family history and fiction to provide rare insights into the traumatic experience of comfort women during the Second World War. In a nearby village, Wang Di is captured and sent to a Japanese military brothel where she is a “comfort woman. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. It’s not just about the awful things that happened to young girls and women when they were taken away from their homes and families, but also about what happened to the people of Singapore as they were bombed and lost their homes, their families or their lives. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land.

The narrative switches between Wang Di during the War , Wang-Di ‘s present life and Kevin and his quest for answers. Colour in your face,’ and wondered if he could tell she was lying, wondered if by saying it, she could will it into being. The novel, with its distinctive feminist tang, starts with the sentence: “When I was born, the name for what I was did not exist. Ero davvero molto incuriosita da Storia della nostra scomparsa perché ammetto essere una di quelle persone che delle case di conforto non ne sapeva nulla. A relatively funny thing – how it speeds by when you have something to look forward to or when you need to get something done desperately (…).This is a brilliant, heart-breaking story with an unforgettable image of how women were silenced and disappeared by both war and culture. How We Disappeared is a powerful, sometimes painful, read, whose characters and incidents will remain with you.

I learned to read in English using audiobooks as I was raised in Chinese by very pragmatic, baby-boomer parents. Singapore, the year 2000: a twelve-year-old boy hears a mumbled confession from his grandmother, which leads him to her history of sexual slavery during the Japanese occupation of Singapore.Ultimately, debut novelist Lee creates a compelling story of generations haunted by war and the silence surrounding their suffering. My great-grandfather suffered a stab wound and the cries of his youngest child were the last sounds he heard before he passed out. Wang Di’s past and present narratives run concurrently with a parallel narrative of a 12-year-old schoolboy, Kevin Lim, who, in his personal quest for the truth, journeys back to the civilian horrors unleashed by the war. This novel set in Singapore grapples with a history that many in the city-state would rather leave forgotten.