Thief of Glory

Thief of Glory by Sigmund Brouwer  326 pages  (waiting on SLPL to get)

  

 

Prolific author Sigmun Brouwer sets this 2014 release in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) during World War II.

Ten-year-old Jeremiah Prins live a luxurious life. His father is a school headmaster, his mother stays at home, and he has five siblings.  He spends his days in school and playing marbles. Jeremiah is an avid marble player and wins more often than not. He has two pouches of marbles that he carries with him at all times and that are tucked neatly below his belt and beneath his shorts.

Life is idyllic. Until the Japanese invasion of the Southeast Pacific in 1942. Jeremiah and his family are sent to an internment camp, where life is brutal. His father and two older step-brothers are sent to a work camp; while the rest of family stays together.

Houses in the camp are divided so that each family gets one room. There is no privacy. There are long, long lines for food and medicine. Brouwer’s descriptions of life in these camps seems much harsher than the accounts that I have read about the American internment camps of the same period. Jeremiah does his best to stand up to his new role in the family: protector and provider. His mother has a much weaker constitution than he imagined. Luckily for Jeremiah, he has his marbles and his friend Laura, with whom he is besotted as he takes on these new responsibilities.

At one particularly harrowing adventure, Jeremiah finds a way out of the cap. He is able to do into the nearby city and trade for the medicines and foods. On one such journey, Lara is ambushed by a python. I must admit, it gave me nightmares.

What is the most interesting of this book is style in which it’s written, and it’s also the most disconcerting. As a contemporary/historical novel, the book opens with Journal 35. That doesn’t give the reader many clues, until about halfway through the novel, the reader learns that the book is being narrated from a much later period. For me, that took some of the wind out of story. Memories are often clouded and exaggerated.  Toward the end of the novel, without notice, Brouwer shifts from a historical prospective to a contemporary one. The transition is confusing and awkward; it’s like I’m reading another story. I didn’t enjoy it as much as it the historical aspect of the story. Also, this book is labeled as Christian, but it did not feel like a Christian novel. 

I received this book for free from Blogging for Books for this review.