The Blurb:

“Parvathi leaves her native Ceylon for Malaya and an arranged marriage to a wealthy businessman. But her father has cheated, supplying a different girl’s photograph, and Kasu Marimuthu, furious, threatens to send her home in disgrace. Gradually husband and wife reach an accommodation, and the naïve young girl learns to assume the air of sophisticated mistress of a luxurious estate. She even adopts his love child and treats Rubini as her own daughter – a generous act which is rewarded by a long-wished-for son.

But it is a life without passion, and Parvathi dreams of loving – and being loved – with complete abandon.

When the Japanese invade Malaya, in WW2, they requisition the estate. Marimuthu dies and Parvathi is forced to accept the protection of the Japanese general who has robbed her of her home. For the first time, she experiences sexual ecstasy. And gradually, her sworn enemy becomes the lover she has always yearned for . . .”

What I thought:

I am actually struggling with finding a way to review this book as, even after turning the last page, I’m still not entirely sure what it’s about. It felt, to me, like the book wanted to be a sprawling, epic book about a woman who was married off for money in Malaysia and set over nearly 100 years, but here it really falls short: there wasn’t enough depth there and I still feel, in a way, that I don’t know the characters well enough. I can’t quite decide whether it was mean to be a family saga, a book about finding true love, a book about spiritualism, a book about WW2, I just don’t know. I sort of feel that the story never really found its true identity.

The story starts in Ceylon in 1916, with the birth of Parvathi to a very poor and lazy father and a doting mother. Her father is told by an astrologer on the day of her birth that she will marry into great wealth and when a marriage broker appears 16 years later trying to find a wife for a hugely wealthy Malaysian businessman, Parvathi’s father gives him a picture of a beautiful girl who is not his daughter and her fate is sealed.

Crossing the sea by herself she is thrust straight into the marriage with this man who is more than 2 decades her senior and who is angry and humilitated at being decieved. He decides to send Parvathi straight back but for reasons that are never especially clear, he doesn’t. She remains in the house where she is happy but unloved. Several years into the marriage, her husbands love-child is brought to live with them after her mother (and her husbands lover) dies and then Parvathi herself gets pregnant and gives birth to a child; a son. These two children are the most rude, selfish, brattish, vile kids and both of them deserved a damn good slap in my opinion! GRRRR!!!

When WW2 breaks out and the Japanese descends on Malaysia, Parvathi is taken to be a lover for a Japanese General and there she finds true love.

It sounds simple enough, right? So it shouldn’t have confused me, but it did. I did enjoy The Japanese Lover but I just didn’t fall in love with it. I didn’t find enough forward momentum with it: I enjoyed it for the most part while reading it but had no real compulsion to pick it up again when I wasn’t reading it. I never really felt like there was anything to cling on to in terms of wanting to know what happened – I felt as though the book couldn’t decided wether to be plot driven (which I don’t think it really was) or character driven (again, there were none whom I felt I knew well enough for this).

I have yet to find another review on the internet for this book but I am looking forward to reading some as I am curious to see if this was just my take on it or wether others feel the same way.

Thank you to Waterstones for my review copy of this book.