The Woman in the White Kimono: (A BBC Radio 2 Book Club pick)

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America - Present day Tori Kodachrome finds a letter containing a shocking revelation in which she questions everything about her father and her family to this point. Her father has died, and, having passed on a slither of information that shakes up Tori’s world, she is determined to find the whole story.

But by the time you get near the end, you’ll be flipping pages like crazy to find out what happens next. But the character of Tori needs to have more depth; the reader has no idea what she looks like, and she has few relationships with other people.Inspired by a true story, the novel tells of two women on opposite sides of the world whose lives collide unexpectedly. Inspired by true stories, The Woman in the White Kimono illuminates a searing portrait of one woman torn between her culture and her heart, and another woman on a journey to discover the true meaning of home.

Naoko Nakamura’s arranged marriage to the son of a friend of her father’s is important to reinforce the status of her family in the community; however, Naoko loves another. Each of the girls at the maternity home were brought there by tragedy, a tragedy that is only worsened at the home: How does this shared experience bind the girls together? El final es totalmente emotivo y hasta cierto punto desgarrador, pero para mí fue un cierre perfecto, que viene a ejemplificar que, en la guerra, no hay vencedores ni vencidos, sino que todos pierden algo.At first, what felt like a wonderful, though emotional, piece of historical fiction soon became something else too. When it’s learned Naoko carries the sailor’s child, she’s cast out in disgrace and forced to make unimaginable choices with consequences that will ripple across generations. Women ostracized for whom they loved, disowned by their families, cut off from everyone they known and loved, and forced to make choices that were truly heart breaking.

A beautiful tale of love, loss and loyalty, acknowledging, without attributing blame, sad historical practices and facts. If it had been examined in more detail, it could have deepened Naoko’s character and the story would have been more authentic.Y así, narrada entre estas dos líneas temporales, separadas en el tiempo y espacio, nos encontramos una emotiva novela que aborda la dureza del Japón de la posguerra desde un prisma muy humano. I found the first part a bit off-putting: there is an awful lot of sitting by a bedside watching a loved one suffering, which doesn’t move the story forward and is almost slushy in its portrayal of an end-of-life scenario. When it's learned Naoko carries the sailor's child, she's cast out in disgrace and forced to make unimaginable choices with consequences that will ripple across generations.