Shanghai by Joseph Kanon

(48. - 1231.) Shanghai by Joseph Kanon - 1939 was a desperate time to be a Jew in Germany. Nazi laws were steadily eliminating their rights within the country. More and more Jews were being sent to concentration camps. With connections Jews could get out of Germany. They had to leave behind family, possessions, money. Destinations were shrinking but Shanghai still admitted Jews.

Daniel Lohr leaves Germany with 10 Reichsmarks in his pocket and a modest suitcase of clothes. His Uncle Nathan arranges a first class ticket for him on the Raffaello,  a Lloyd ship. Uncle Nathan has underworld connections. There is a favour to be done for the ticket.

Lohr meets the lovely Leah Auerbach and her mother, Frau Clara Auerbach. They have fled with little more than Lohr after the family business is sold to its German manager.

On board class and racial distinctions are maintained. The Jews are grouped at a table for meals. They are uncomfortable with Colonel Yamada, a member of the Kempetai, the Japanese Military Police, in Shanghai.

In Shanghai there is constant tension over the Japanese presence.

Lohr connects with his Uncle Nathan who has a nightclub. Their reunion is poignant. There is no one left in their family.

In business there is constant “squeeze” to be paid to the Japanese. Lesser “squeeze” is paid to the Chinese.

Lohr must decide whether he wants to join his uncle in the club business or try to make a living as a journalist.

The Jewish community has a strong presence in the nightclubs of the International Settlement.

As he ponders, Lohr starts making stops at night at the clubs to pick up gossip for the Merry-Go-Round column of Selden Loomis in the North-China Tribune. 

Lohr finds his past is never far behind him. There were issues for him with the Nazi regime beyond being Jewish. Life experiences have hardened Lohr. He is ready to be ruthless to survive in a world at war.

Lohr and Leah connect.

Uncle Nathan, with others, owns the Gold Rush, a grand Tudor style home, converted to a nightclub on the ground floor, public rooms for roulette and blackjack on the second and private gaming rooms on third. A broad staircase makes for dramatic entrances and exits. Elegance and champagne all around.

The interactions between Westerners, Chinese and Japanese are fraught with tension.

Lohr is adept but not infallible at working out the odds on the amounts of “squeeze” to be paid and when to say “no”. 

While business disputes may ultimately be resolved by words but only after bodies have fallen. No one relaxes in Shanghai.

Lohr goes to see Xi, a Chinese businessman with a gang. Xi speaks and Lohr replies:

“So you’ve come to see me. You think I can guarantee that. There are no guarantees in life.”

“No. But there are promises.”

With WW II underway in Europe anxiety pervades Shanghai. The wise know the war is coming. When and how will the war come to China? Life is about to change.

Morality shrinks when war dictates life. There is precious little rule of law in a war. People do what they need to survive.

Can there be a touch of honour amidst the brutality? 

Kanon is skilled at exploring what men and women will do in the maelstrom of WW II. Is Lohr a good German? I was reminded of his book, The Good German, which I read 20 years ago. 

Kanon comes near Philip Kerr in examining the moral issues facing those who want to be good in a world where evil strives for supremacy.

****

Kanon, Joseph – (2004) - The Good German; (2012) - "K" is for Joseph Kanon

Summing Up Maisie Dobbs

Summing up a life is a challenge. How much detail? How much emotion? In The Comfort of Ghosts Winspear brilliantly sums up the life of Maisie Dobbs that unfolded in the 18 books of the series. Virtually every chapter takes a reader back in her life. Thus this commentary will also travel through her life. As with my review of The Comfort of Ghosts it is best not to read this post if you are planning to read the series.

For Maisie and the other characters ghosts are ever present with the losses from two world wars and the deaths that are inevitable through decades of family history. Yet those ghosts can bring an uncertain comfort.

It took Maisie years to move on from the lingering / slow death of her first love, Dr. Simon Lynch, years after the end of WW I. Simon and Maise had been wounded together at a forward hospital by an artillery shell.

Billy Beale’s family still mourns the death of little Lizzie taken by diptheria.

Her best friend Priscilla had been crushed by the death of her three brothers in the Great War and then her parents dying in the post-war influenza epidemic. Had Maisie not introduced her to Douglas Partridge she would have drunk herself to death. 

While Priscilla’s three sons survived World War II they are going separate ways and lonelieness has revived the dragon of despair.

There is a dragon within every character. I am dismayed that I did not remember the dragon lurking inside Maisie.

One of the strengths of the series is that readers feel an empathy, a connection to Maisie. Losses come to all of us. My parents were gone by the time I was 36 and my only sibling, my sister, died when I was 48.

In reading The Comfort of Ghosts, the ghosts I thought of were the hemophiliacs I represented starting in 1991. Each had AIDS and each was dying as there was no treatment at that time for AIDS. Of my original 11 clients, 8 had died by 1996. They were all about my age. For the only time in my life I spoke of the dead during a legal argument as feeling their presence in the courtroom.

Maisie has believed the dragon of despair can be held at bay but not slain.

Billy’s wife Doreen changes Maisie’s mind as Billy recounts how she talked about dragons:

‘I’ve had enough of this dragon lark,’ she said. ‘That dragon has to be knocked out once and for all, so he never wakes up again. And another thing,’ she says, ‘I reckon dragons get more dangerous and thrash around when they’re getting weaker - so tell that to your Mrs. P. If her dragon is off the leash, it means she’s getting better and he knows he’s losing his bottle, so don’t give him power by talking about him. When the dragon is going down, that’s when you have to be made of steel, not straw. Our boy will get back to his old self by looking ahead - by seeing how things could be for him, not down in the cellars of his mind where the dragon lives. And if we give everything we’ve got into helping him get stronger, he’ll be able to do a St. George and put a sword right through the blimmin’ thing.’

There is the comfort of ghosts in unexpected ways. Maisie meets a stonemason carving the names of the second war’s dead into a town memorial. He tells her of families coming to the memorial:

They usually wear their Sunday best when they visit. You see the mums shed a tear and the fathers comfort them. Young widows come with their parents and some bring the nippers along too. And the strangest thing - though, I dunno, perhaps it’s not so strange - they go up and touch the name. They run their fingers over every letter, as if they could feel the one they’ve lost.

I thought of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall with the names of 58,318 men and women etched in the black stone and how meaningful it has been for America veterans and families of the deceased to come to the memorial and find and feel the names of lost comrades and family

A comforting ghost is the memory of Maisie’s mentor, Maurice Blanche. He arranged a formal education for her and then educated her in the arts of investigation and how to feel a person’s soul from their physical actions.

The death of her husband, James Compton, and the resulting stillbirth of their child haunted me as a reader. For Maisie his memory is a comfort though always fraught with pain, 

Maisie’s final case is after solving the murder in The Comfort of Ghosts. Fittingly, it does not involve murder but does involve generations of ghosts.

I was drawn to read the initial book, Maisie Dobbs, by a blurb drawn from the New York Times. I normally avoid blurbs but this one caught my eye and I am glad it led me to the series. It said “be prepared to be astonished”. Maisie Dobbs topped my 2008 Bill’s Best of Fiction. Sixteen years later with 20 posts upon the series this will be my last post on Maisie. Astonished I have been.

I read the final pages with reluctance knowing they were the last I will read of Maisie’s remarkable life. Maisie felt a pang as she contemplated the 35 years covered in the series. I was heartened by her commitment to look forward to her future. Thinking of the reading joy Maisie brought me and her resolve to move ahead has inspired me to look forward to reading new series with wonderful characters.

****

Winspear, Jacqueline – (2008) - Maisie Dobbs; (Best fiction of 2008) (2008) - Birds of a Feather; (2009) - Pardonable Lies; (2011) - Messenger of Truth; (2012) - An Incomplete Revenge; (2012) - Among the Mad; (2013) - The Mapping of Love and Death; (2016) - A Lesson in Secrets; (2016) - Elegy for Eddie; (2018) Leaving Everything Most Loved; (2020) - A Dangerous Place - Part I on Maisie's life since the last book and Part II a review; (2020) - A Journey to Munich; (2021) - In This Grave Hour; (2021) - To Die But Once; (2022) - The American Agent; (2023) - The Consequences of Fear; (2023) - A Sunlit Weapon; (2024) - The Comfort of Ghosts

Pardonable Lies by Jacqueline Winspear

After putting up a post reviewing the 18th and final Maisie Dobbs mystery I realized as I was preparing a summing up post on the series that I had not posted a review on one of the earliest books, Pardonable Lies. I went back and found the review I had written in 2009 before I started blogging. My reviews were shorter at that time.

****

 20. - 483.) Pardonable Lies by Jacqueline Winspear – In the fall of 1930 Maisie Dobbs, psychologist and investigator, is back for her 3rd mystery. Two cases occupy her. At Scotland Yard’s request she interviews a 13 year old girl suspected of killing her pimp “uncle”. Convinced Avril Jarvis did not murder, Maisie seeks to establish her innocence. At the same time Maisie is asked by Sir Cecil Lawton K.C. to confirm his son, Ralph, died in World War I. While there was an obvious strain in the father / son relationship Lawton is honouring the request of his late wife who believed to her dying day that her son had not perished during the War. Maisie works out an arrangement that in return for taking on Lawton’s quest he would defend Jarvis. As she starts upon her investigations Maisie is asked by her close friend, Priscilla Partridge, to determine what happened to her brother, Peter Evernden, whose place of death during the War is unknown to her. Pursuing her investigations of what happened to the young men during the War Maisie finds herself in the murky work done by Maurice Blanche during the War. Most challenging, she is drawn back to her horrific memories of the War. The voice of her deceased mother tells her to slay her dragons. While she faces physical danger in her queries the greater risk is to her mind as she returns to France 12 years after the end of the War. While the voices in her head are more muted I was reminded of Ian Rutledge and Hamish, the deceased corporal, who shares Ian’s mind in the mysteries of Charles Todd. The emotional traumas of the War, covered up by her dedication to work, can no longer be avoided when her investigations take her back into the War. The wounds of the mind linger longest in all the characters who went to the War. I enjoyed the book but enjoyed the first two in the series better. This book is a better mystery but the investigation is more conventional than the previous mysteries. Her talents at reading people are less important. Maisie is a worthy member of a trio of WW I veterans in contemporary mystery writing joining Rutledge and Rennie Airth’s hero John Madden. (May 31/09) 

****

Winspear, Jacqueline – (2008) - Maisie Dobbs; (Best fiction of 2008) (2008) - Birds of a Feather; (2009) - Pardonable Lies; (2011) - Messenger of Truth; (2012) - An Incomplete Revenge; (2012) - Among the Mad; (2013) - The Mapping of Love and Death; (2016) - A Lesson in Secrets; (2016) - Elegy for Eddie; (2018) Leaving Everything Most Loved; (2020) - A Dangerous Place - Part I on Maisie's life since the last book and Part II a review; (2020) - A Journey to Munich; (2021) - In This Grave Hour; (2021) - To Die But Once; (2022) - The American Agent; (2023) - The Consequences of Fear; (2023) - A Sunlit Weapon; (2024) - The Comfort of Ghosts

The Comfort of Ghosts by Jacqueline Winspear

(52. - 1235.) The Comfort of Ghosts by Jacqueline Winspear - In the 18th and final Maisie Dobbs book World War II has ended. During the fall of 1945 an exhausted England is sort of welcoming home the military who survived the war. Hundreds of thousands of families are homeless. Food remains rationed. Rubble is everywhere.

Maisie is determined to ease the return to peacetime for those she encounters in need. It is almost impossible to review the book without spoilers for readers who have not read the series. In a departure from my usual effort to avoid spoilers this post will include spoilers but not of the resolution of murder.

Sir Julian Comption, her original employer as a maid 35 years earlier, who became her first father-in-law and lastly was her friend has died. Maisie and her family do their best to adjust to the loss.

Maisie’s American husband, Mark, continues to shuttle between the United States and England as he deals with sensitive diplomatic issues.

Her adopted daughter, Anna, is doing well.

Maisie’s greatest challenge is the son of Billy Beale, her trusted employee who is now her partner in the investigation business. “Young Billy” who wants to be called “Will” spent 4 years in a Japanese prisoner of war camp. He returns emaciated in body and deeply wounded in mind. Were it not for Maisie I doubt he would have lived more than a few weeks back in England. His father has endured the periodic demons of shell shock since the end of World War I.

Can Maisie find a way to help father and son?

Maisie takes up the cause of a quartet of teenagers who had been trained to be guerillas had Germany invaded England. Their war came to a troubled end that has them on the run.

The teenagers have seen the murder of an Honourable and officials “on high” have had the coroner list the death as “death by misadventure” and records have been taken away by “government order”. 

Maisie is disturbed by the murder, the political nature of the Honourable’s life and the coverup. How far will those “on high” go to maintain secrecy?

She will protect the teenagers and calls upon her best friend, Priscilla Partridge, to assist her.

The teenagers, especially the girls, are very bright. The youngest, Grace, reminded me of Maisie as a teenage maid for the Comptons stealing downstairs to read in their library in the middle of the night. 

Inevitably, in a book readers know is the last in the series, the murder has a lesser role. Its resolution felt somewhat contrived but is appropriate for the plot.

For the living characters two wars have left them seeking routine. I tell younger members of the office I will know you are maturing when you are content with a routine day.

After resolving the murder Maisie comes across love letters written by her deceased husband, James Compton, when he was a teenager to his first love, Enid, a maid who shared a room with Maisie. Enid died in a munitions factory explosion in 1914. The letters, written almost two decades before Maisie and James met, set Maisie off on a remarkable final case.

The world is weary from the two world wars. Maisie is tired in body and spirit. It is time for her to be Anna’s full time mother and Mark’s full time wife.

****

Winspear, Jacqueline – (2008) - Maisie Dobbs; (Best fiction of 2008) (2008) - Birds of a Feather; (2009) - Pardonable Lies; (2011) - Messenger of Truth; (2012) - An Incomplete Revenge; (2012) - Among the Mad; (2013) - The Mapping of Love and Death; (2016) - A Lesson in Secrets; (2016) - Elegy for Eddie; (2018) Leaving Everything Most Loved; (2020) - A Dangerous Place - Part I on Maisie's life since the last book and Part II a review; (2020) - A Journey to Munich; (2021) - In This Grave Hour; (2021) - To Die But Once; (2022) - The American Agent; (2023) - The Consequences of Fear; (2023) - A Sunlit Weapon

Shanghai Girls by Lisa See

(45. - 1228.) Shanghai Girls by Lisa See - Pearl, the narrator, is the older less favoured sister. May is the favourite of Baba and Mama. They are “beautiful girls” serving as models for “calendars, posters and advertisements”. At 21 and 18 they are as independent as possible for young women in Shanghai of 1937. They consider themselves modern women.

It was with dread I read the opening chapters. The Japanese attack on Shanghai was pending. The girls have no knowledge of politics and war. Pearl and May are concerned about fashion. 

Their dreams of love end abruptly. Their father, Baba, is a gambler. The choices they see before them are gone. Baba has lost his business and their investments. He arranges marriages of the girls to a pair of American Chinese men.

The Japanese are disdainfully referred to as the “monkey people”. The consequences of the Japanese onslaught are as brutal as I feared. The Chinese call the attacking Japanese soldiers “dwarf bandits”.

The girls and Mama flee Shanghai. 

Gravely injured during their flight, Mama whispers to Pearl that she is Pearl Dragon having been born in the year of the Dragon and “that only a Dragon can tame the fates”. She extracts a promise from Pearl that she will take care of May.

With little money and no prospects in China they leave for America. The girls have become survivors living for the present. They will deal with the future when it arrives.

They are held at the Angel Island Immigration Station, the immigration point for the Western United States. It is a prison. America does not want Chinese immigrants and the girls are rigorously questioned.

Pearl and May and a daughter, Joy, join their husbands, Sam and Vern, of the arranged marriages in Los Angeles. The combined Louie family live in a small apartment and work daily in small family businesses at China City.

Life is a hard grind. Prejudice is severe. Restaurants refuse to serve Chinese people and movie theatres force them into the balcony. The girls despair that there will never be a better future.

After persistent entreaties May is allowed to work in Hollywood where she can earn $5.00 per day.

When the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor on December 7 and America joins WW II circumstances change.

Discrimination yields to war needs. Chinese men and women can go to work in armament factories such as Lockheed earning $34 a week when they are making $20 a month in the restaurant. Pearl remains a waitress at the family restaurant.

At the end of the war Sam buys a used car.

At 10 Joy is a natural salesperson. On weekends from 6 pm to midnight she sells gardenias, fifteen cents for one and twenty-five cents for a double. Tourists love the pretty little Chinese girl speaking and singing naturally in English.

Good news and bad news occur in tandem.

Fear never eases for the Chinese of California. When Mao Tse-Tung takes control of mainland China, the intense fear in America of Communists leads to the suspension of habeas corpus and arrests and some deportations of Chinese. Reading the wrong newspaper is cause for suspicion.

After a lifetime around the Methodist Church as a “rice Christian” Pearl becomes a “one-Goder” and a true believer. Her conversion is also useful in asserting she is not a Godless Communist.

The U.S. introduces a Confession Program that allows illegally entered Chinese to confess their deceit and, if they implicate another, get American citizenship.

FBI agents press Sam and Pearl trying to get them to confess to the truth which is they entered the U.S. illegally. They are resolute and deflect inquiries and admit no wrongdoing.

Unfortunately, Joy believes Red China is a worker’s paradise. May confesses that she informed on Sam to the FBI in a misguided effort to ensure they will be able to stay in America.

In an incredibly dramatic scene Pearl and May hurl accusations at the other going back to their days as girls in Shanghai.

The ending is unconventional. I have mixed emotions about the conclusion.

The harsh lives of the girls from the late 1930’s into the 1940’s reminded me that millions of people across the world endured suffering and loss that can barely be understood in the Western World of the 2st Century.

I found Shanghai Girls a hard book as I was a brother in life not a sister. The strength of the book is the relationship between Pearl and May. The plot has neither a happy beginning nor a happy middle nor a happy ending. I was moved by the spirit of the sisters who experience desperate circumstances and a discriminatory America. I doubt either could have survived without the other. Their bond is strained by circumstance and their emotions and decisions but they are sustained by their love for each other. Pearl reflects:

The last thing May says to me is “When our hair is white, we’ll still have our sister love.”