Chapters 7 & 8

Chapter 7 and 8 were great! Jean and Joe FINALLY see each other after 6 years. I found my heart breaking for a second for her when he doesn’t recognize her in the airport and walks in the other direction. But then she goes to talk to him and they start talking like the 6 years that separated them never happened. I want to skip the summary part of my blog for now, maybe I’ll go back to it when I have more time, and go straight to the part about how I feel about these chapters. I was simply delighted when Jean and Joe decide to get married the following year. It was kind of predictable but not at all boring how the entire thing worked itself out. I feel kind of bad for Mr. Strachan at the end of chapter eight though. Oh, and I was so entirely focused on the plot of the novel that I completely forgot the novel was being narrated by Mr. Strachan himself. But the reason I feel bad for him is because even though he is seventy-three years old and old enough to be Jean’s grandfather (which makes it kind of gross) he reveals to himself that maybe he did love her. After he got Jean’s letter saying that she and Joe would be getting married, he was so out of it he crossed a street and didn’t even notice and got hit by a taxi. He didn’t die or anything though. I noticed the fact that he might have been in love with Jean or liked her a little too much in the first couple chapters of the novel, so it didn’t come off as a huge surprise when he finally noticed it himself. The fact that it’s gross that a 73 year old man would have feelings for a girl that could be his granddaughter doesn’t just stop a reader who read the novel from feeling sorry for the guy. I mean, if I just saw the facts and not the story behind it, I would also think it’s disgusting and not feel sorry for him at all; so I’d understand if someone reading this doesn’t get why I feel sorry for Mr. Strachan.

Chapter 6

In chapter 6 Jeans goes to Australia, finds out that Joe went on a walkabout and is out of the country. Jean and Mr. Strachan always write to each other every week. Jean makes friends in the towns that she visits and decides to set up a business in Willstown using the knowledge she gained by working as a typist. I was really anxious while reading this chapter. I knew that Jean and Joe would meet eventually and I couldn’t wait for it happen. I find it great how Jean is such a strong woman who is very independent and is able to get by only relying on herself to get her to places. I feel as if she and I would be great friends if she was real hahaha.

Chapter 5

This chapter explains how Joe was able to survive the beating.
When Jean learns that there is a chance that Joe Harman could be alive she travels to Kuantan and speaks to a nurse that tended to Joe. The nurse reassures Jean that Joe did in fact survive. So she goes to Australia to look for him.
The story then goes back to Mr. Strachan. He is in his office in England when Joe Harman himself shows up! And he's looking for Jean! Mr. Strachan tells Joe that Jean is out of the country and that she had inherited money from a relative. He tells Joe to write Jean a letter and come back the next day with the letter and that he, Mr. Strachan, would send out to Jean himself since he can't give away Jean's information. When Joe doesn't show up, Mr. Strachan sends his assistant after him. He finds that Joe had gotten drunk and got arrested the same night they had spoken. He bails Joe out of jail and lets him stay at his house. Mr. Strachan gets Joe to tell him why he didn’t write the letter to Jean. Joe believes that he isn’t good enough for her, especially now that she is rich. He says he wouldn’t be able to give her the things she wants. Where he lives in the backcountry, he says, there isn’t anywhere for a woman to entertain herself, no shops or cinemas or anything (Quite silly if you ask me).
By the end of the chapter, Joe starts to head home to Australia when Mr. Strachan says something that foreshadows Joe’s and Jean’s meeting to come.

I really like this book, it's very interesting and the author is very good at describing the way the characters feel. At first, the novel was kind of confusing but now that I'm further into the plot I can barely put the book down. I can't wait to read the next chapter. =)

Chapter 4

In this chapter many things happen. Jean and the surviving prisoners end up staying in a village called Kuala Telang where some very nice villagers lived. Since most of the men from the village were serving in the war, Jean and the village chief, Mat Amin bin Taib, were able to convince the Japanese to let them stay there and help the women plant rice. They stayed there for 3 years, until the war ended. Jean returns to England only to find that her mother and her brother Donald had both died.
What Jean didn’t know was that she became known to many people. Her story went around the country and many, if not all of the people who served in that part of the war knew about her and respected her for what she had done to keep the rest of the women and children safe.

Mr. Strachan and Jean discussed her upcoming trip and she went a few months later. Jean builds a well for the women at Kuala Telang and they are very grateful. One day, Jean was talking to the builders when she finds out that the Australian soldier who was tortured at Kuantan lived…

Chapter 3

On their trip, Jean starts dressing like the native women because it is much more comfortable than the English style clothing she was wearing before.  Along their walk, Mrs. Horsefall, the leader of the group, gets malaria and Jean has to help her. The women are sent to Port Dickson and stay there for a while until the Japanese commander starts seeing the women as a nuisance and sends them to Seremban.At Siliau, which is between Port Dickson and Seremban, Jane Holland dies. This greatly affects her mother, Mrs. Holland, though she tries to be strong in front of the others. As Mrs. Holland got weaker by the day, Jean started to carry baby Robin Holland, and Robin gets very attached to Jean. Lucky for him, he didn’t get sick like the other children because he only ate recently boiled food. Both Jean and baby Robin got browner everyday due to being under the sun. Even with all the walking, jean was in much better health than she was when they were first held captive at Panong. The only other unmarried girl in the group other than Jean, Ellen Forbes, goes missing one night when the other women were sleeping. They didn’t notice her absence until the next morning and they had to leave her behind. Another person dies at Alor Gajah (Judy Thomsome), and on the group’s way to Gemas, Mrs. Horsefall, who had never fully recovered from her sickness, dies as well, leaving the leadership position to Jean. Mrs. Horsefall’s son, Johnnie, is then put under Mrs. Frith’s care. Mrs. Frith is a faded woman over 50 years of age who is constantly complaining and moaning in pain during the night. However, this changes when Mrs. Frith finds a reason to carry on in the form of Johnnie Horsefall. By the time the women get to Gemas, 7 of them had died and no good news awaited them at Gemas either. The Japanese captain there, Captain Nisui, tells the women that he had received strict orders to not bring any more prisoners to Singapore. When the women are away from the Japanese, Mrs. Frith suggests: “’if they’d just let us alone we could find a little place like the one at them villages and live till it’s all over.’” This stays in Jeans mind as they are set in the direction of Kuantan for a women’s camp. Kuantan is hundreds of miles away from Gemas and the women are forced to march every step. Fever breaks out among the children and 4 of them die at Bahau at the height of the sickness. Freddie, Mrs. Holland’s other child, is among the children who die. Since baby Robin is the only child Mrs. Holland has left, Jean tries to give him back to Mrs. Holland but she refuses. This is because the baby, after spending such a long time with Jean, prefers her over his weak mother. Besides, Mrs. Holland points out, she is far too weak to carry him while they march and has no energy to play with him. So Jean works out a plan: the baby would get his food from Mrs. Holland but its play time from Jean. The women found their “…Japanese guards to be humane and reasonable men, uncouth in their habits and mentally far removed from western ideas, but tolerant to the weakness of women and deeply devoted to children” (63).

                Mrs. Frith became an important member of the group since she had vast knowledge of the country and its diseases. She becomes a friend to Jean, especially after Mrs. Holland dies. Before her death, Mrs. Holland tells Jean to give a message to her husband, thanks Jean for all she’d done, and apologizes for being a burden. While going through an extremely unhealthy district called Ayer Kring, baby Robin gets sick and Jean is given some native type of quinine from the wife of the headman of the village. The medicine helps the baby get better.  After Ayer Kring, the women move to Maran, where they meet 2 Australian soldiers also being help captives. One of them is named Joe Harman. The 2 Australians drive railway lines and sleepers from one place to another in trucks under the surveillance of Jap soldiers. Joe and Jean become friends and talk to each other for as long as Joe can sneak out without getting caught. Joe gets the women medicine by trading some things he steals from the Japs with Chinese merchants.  Jean learns that Joe is a stock rider in the Australian backcountry and Jean tells Joe that she is a shorthand typist in England and of her hometown and how after the war she’s going to go to the ice-rink she went to as a child. Joe steals some chickens from the local commanding officer, Captain Sugamo, and gives them to the women. The women share the chickens with their guards. When captain Sugamo finds out his chickens were stolen he is outraged and took it as in insult not only to himself but to the Imperial Japanese Army. He sends guards to look everywhere for the missing chickens and eventually tracks them to jean. Captain Sugamo is known for his violent behavior and shows it when he makes his soldiers hit Jean so she’ll tell him how she got the chickens. Jean however, makes up some story and sticks with it, but then Joe comes to town in his truck and sees jean getting kicked and tells Captain Sugamo that he was the one who stole the chickens. The story then comes back to Jean sitting in Mr. Strachan’s sitting room. She informs him that Captain Sugamo had Joe Harman crucified; they nailed his hands to a tree and beat him to death at Kuantan. Captain Sugamo made Jean and the women and children watch.    

Chapter 2

Mr. Strachan is very surprised by Jean's decision to go back to Malaya and dig a well, and Jean wants Mr. Strachan to understand her decision. Jean then goes on to explain how she lived with her family in Malaya until she was 11 and her brother Donald 14 years old. She moves with her mom and brother but her father, Arthur Paget, stays in Malaya for work. Jean's father dies in a car accident and the president of the Kalua Perak Plantation Company, which was where Jean's father worked, offered a position to Donald when he turned 19 years old because they liked Arthur since he was a very valuable and competent man. Time goes by and Jean and Donald grow up and eventually Donald goes to Malaya for his promised position. When Jean gets older, she also goes to Malaya to work at Kalua Lumper. The war breaks out but Jean is not worried. Eventually however, everyone has to evacuate Kalua Lumper since it was shutting down because of the Japanese advancement. Jean's boss tells her to go to Singapore but instead she goes to Batu Tasik to see the Hollands, a family that she was friends with. When she arrives, Mrs. Holland is in a panic since her husband, Mr. Holland, had not come back since morning and only returned later in the evening. The Hollands packed and were going to go to Kalua Lumper but after 2 mi on their way their tire burst and they had to walk back home, leaving behind all their bags in the car. Around 2 hours later an officer in a truck came to the Holland’s house and told them they needed to leave since the Japs were headed their way. The officer took them, along with many other families who had waited until the last second to evacuate to Panong. The officer had hoped they could take a boat to Singapore and with an affirmation from the D.C. he left the families at Panong and went to rejoin his unit.
The D.C. waited ashore for the boat but when it landed Japs came out of the boat and captured Panong.
Jean, along with the Hollands and the other families became prisoners. The men were separated from the women and children to be taken to prison camps. Jean and the Holland family had to say goodbye to Mr. Holland. Before he got taken away, Mr. Holland asks Jean to stay with his wife, Eileen, and his 3 children.
On their 35th day as prisoners at Panong, an 8 year old child named Esme Harrison died from dysentery.
Jean then goes on to tell Mr. Strachan that the remaining prisoners were moved from Panong to other villages. Their final destination was supposed to be Singapore but with no cars, they were forced to walk about 10 miles each day under the hot sun. Many women and children got sick and some even died. Eventually the guards started to need Jean's help to get directions from the Malayan people since they spoke little to no Malay and Jean is fluent in Malay. The soldiers aided the women by helping to carry their luggage and the children along the way. When they got to villages the soldier in charge let Jean go to the market to buy fruits for the other women.
Before the women got to Klang another woman had died of exhaustion. By then, Jean and another woman named Mrs. Horsefall, who had taken charge as their leader, had made an agreement with the soldier in charge to walk only every other day in order to prevent others from dying as well.
While in Klang, little Ben Collard, who had been bitten by a scorpion, died.

Chapter 1

The novel start in 1935 with Mr. Douglas Macfadden and Mr. Noel Strachan, making adjustments to Mr. Macfadden's will in Ayr. After their business is done, Mr. Strachan returns to his home in London. Years later, Mr. Macfadden dies. Mr. Strachan then has to track down Jean, Mr. Macfadden's sister, and her children, Jean and Donald, since they were the ones that Mr. Macfadden had entrusted his estate to. However, Mr. Strachan learns that both Mr. Macfadden's sister, Jean, and her son, Donald, had died, hence, solely leaving Jean, Mr. Macfadden's niece, to the inheritance.
Jean Paget, currently around 27 years old, is a shorthand typist at a firm of handbag manufacturers. Mr. Stranchan sends Jean a letter and they discuss the inheritance. Since Jean can not inherit everything until she is 35 years old, and gets around 900 pounds every year, Mr. Strachan will be her trustee until 1956.
Mr. Stranchan is quite an old man, and since his wife of 27 years died, he has done nothing but work. Since he has time, Mr. Strachan offers to try and educate Jean in the arts, and takes her to see operas, art galleries, and etc.
Mr. Strachan askes Jean what she wants to do with her money, but she always says she doesn't know. One day, when they were supposed to go to see the Hampton Court, it rained so they met at Mr. Strachan's flat for lunch. Jean then tells Mr. Strachan that she wants to go back to Malaya, where she once lived and was held as a prisoner of war, and dig a well.