Adam Lewis Schroeder

The beginning of this book captivated me. I thought I was starting a love story – a book about a once upon a time love…the kind of story that I hear from my grandma and others of the WWII generation. Two people meet in a world that is upside down and they just KNOW they are meant together. And many MANY years later, one loses the other and is unsure how to continue on alone.

I’m not sure why I thought that…but I was wrong. The first chapter was like that as Harry Winslow prepares for show more and then loses his wife Lily. The love and heartache are there – the sense of bewilderment of an old man who doesn’t know how to go on. And then we go back in time to pre-World War II Canada with Harry, a young man who is ready to embark on just about any adventure that will get his life started. We then spend the next 7/8 of the book as he heads for the sea, meets Lily, endures one of the first battles with the Japanese, and is then captured and taken to a POW camp.

I do not mean to make light of or diminish the importance of Harry’s experiences during the war. I just glimpsed such a sense of deep feeling in the modern day Harry that I didn’t get even during the most gut wrenching war scenes that I kept turning the pages faster and faster, hoping we’d either jump to modern day for at least a scene. But, it was not to be.

During his war years, Harry does maintain a sense of humor, or at least a sense of the absurd, and is astonished along with the reader as we see some of the unbelievable things that happen during wartime. Some parts of the book, too, were heartbreaking, or would be if I felt more like Harry was experiencing them as well, instead of merely noting them.

FINALLY, in the last chapter(s) of the book, we return to modern day Harry as he is faced with a part of his wife he never knew, an aspect of her life he was blind to. And here, the emotion of an old man who has done and seen too much, comes through with full force.

“The one thought that’s been creeping in is that I haven’t lost you quite as much as I’d thought I had. I haven’t lost you because as it turns out the you that I lost wasn’t a real person. A guy can’t have lost what didn’t exist in the first place, right? No, she did exist, but I only saw half.”

Maybe because he saw so much of the inexplicable during the war, he stopped seeing things he couldn’t understand once he’d survived the war. The war changed him dramatically, taking away his desire for travel, for new experiences, for adventure. He just wanted his wife – and only the version of the wife he remembered from the day they’d met.

In the end, Harry is faced with the fact that he didn’t really know his wife. The reader is faced with the fact that while we know many things that took place in Harry’s life during his youth, we don’t really know Harry. Which is a shame. show less

“Empress of Asia” begins with protagonist, Harry Winslow, describing life as “bursts of activity that happen so quickly that we can’t even tell exactly what’s happening.”

In a sense, this story is Harry’s description of his own life’s “bursts of activity”. Beginning in the late 1930’s, Harry’s adult life begins when he leaves home to work on boats. As World War II unfolds, Harry is inadvertently drawn eastward and into the heart of the Japanese war in and around show more Singapore. It is an exciting couple of years for an otherwise mild-mannered, unambitious man, who is far more motivated by really great jazz than political idealism and freedom from fascism.

Shortly before she dies, at the very beginning of the book, Harry's wife Lily exhorts Harry to travel to Thailand in search of a long lost friend from the war. The book’s story unfolds as Harry recollects these defining wartime years of his life.

Harry is masterfully drawn as a painfully short-sighted Everyman drawn into extraordinary events. Encompassing an approximately seven-year stretch of time from about 1938 to 1945, it is primarily through the self-determination and ambition of others, that Harry goes where he goes and does what he does. Over and over, he is the hapless beneficiary of the ambition, courage, and cleverness of other people.

The concluding section of the book finds the elderly Harry in Thailand following the trail of crumbs Lily left for him to find his old friend. What he untimately discovers rattles everything he thought about his life since the war. Despite his dramatic time in Asia, before and after, because of fear and prejudices, he has lived a limited, shuttered life. Thailand wakes him up.

Had I a few less interruptions by my four kids, I would have gotten through “Empress of Asia” in two days instead of three. I stayed up late and woke up early to get in a few extra pages. Even days after finishing, I still have a palpable sense of the Malay Peninsula during World War II; that lesser known WWII arena of exotic heat, bugs, landscape, and people.

“Empress of Asia” was originally published in Canada in 2006; March 2008 will be its debut in the United States. Schroeder is a Canadian poet of some repute, and as a reader, it is clear to me that he has a poet's ear for the cadence of narrative and dialogue. His story flows indelibly from page to page – it is a hard book to put down and pick up, not because the reading is difficult (it isn’t), but because it is so utterly transporting. Schroeder’s subtextual use of dialogue and foreign dialects is masterful. (Note: Though the book doesn’t contain a glossary, there is a very good one on Schroeder’s website that is worth referencing.) Schoeder’s characters are refreshingly multifaceted – all have an authentic balance of strengths and weaknesses.

Towards the end of the book, Harry discovers bowls of live snakes and turtles for sale in a Thai market, and makes this telling observation about the will to survive: “Of course the snakes just slither around in the bottom but…. the turtles are stacked one on top of the other and in the fifteen seconds that I’m watching one of them drags himself to the top and flips onto the pavement!…. [I]f they’re all going to end up in the soup anyway, why should the [turtles] on the bottom give two shakes if the ones on top have a little more ambition? In the meantime the snakes just lay there wondering which minute is going to be their last, so which bowl would you rather have been in?”

Harry appears to be much more like one of the snakes, waiting passively along through events, but there are numerous ambitious turtles with whom he finds himself entangled and carried along, and, in the end, he survives. As the reader, I am left to wonder, of the snake and turtle, which am I?

I definitely recommend “Empress of Asia”. show less

The Empress of Asia opens as Harry Winslow's dying wife tells him that Michel Ney, a WWII buddy, is still alive and that Harry must go to Thailand and see him. This begins Harry's quest to a remote area of Thailand to reconnect with his past ... or so he thinks.

Harry Winslow is a wild youth with a love for Fats Waller music and an itch to see the world. Harry joins the merchant marine and finds himself on a ship called the Empress of Asia. The Empress is sunk by the Japanese, near Singapore, show more and Harry is transported to the island where he wanders, unsure what to do next. During his brief time in Singapore, Harry meets and marries Lily. Married for only one night, the couple is separated and find themselves in POW camps on different islands. Neither Harry nor Lily know whether the other is alive until, years later, Harry is brought back to Singapore and placed in a POW camp just a few short miles from Lily. The POWs are liberated by Allied troops and Harry and Lily are reunited. What Harry doesn't know, is that Lily carries a painful secret during the length of their married life. It is upon her deathbed that she gives her husband the cryptic message that he must go to Thailand to see Michel.

I thought I was reading a love story when I began this book and was quite surprised to find myself reading an adventure story instead. Harry Winslow survives jailbreaks, horrendous conditions in POW camps, and dangerous sea crossings. What is missing from the majority of the book is a sense of Harry himself. Harry seems oddly removed from his horrendous circumstances and shows little ambition to try and change them. Instead, he is malleable to the whims and plans of others. Michel Ney is a loyal friend and Harry owes much of his survival to this man; yet when Harry discovers just how much Michel has done for him, he is as reflective and emotional as a doorknob. Because of this, I found it hard to connect with either Harry or his plight.

The last section of the novel brings resolution to the mystery at the beginning. Though I felt that the "payoff" at the end was too little, the author did bring some symmetry and beauty to that ending. Perhaps the point of the book is simply about the human will to survive. Schroeder provides a moving metaphor for this when, toward the end of the story, Harry comes across bowls of live snakes and turtles for sale at a Thai market:

"... the snakes just slither around in the bottom but ... the turtles are stacked one on top of the other and in the fifteen seconds that I'm watching one of them drags himself to the top and flips onto the pavement! ... Gumboot plunks him back in. ... [T]he next turtle takes his turn over the side. And if they're all going to end up in the soup anyway, why should the ones on the bottom give two shakes if the ones on top have a little more ambition? In the meantime the snakes just lay there wondering which minute is going to be their last, so which bowl would you rather have been in?"

Harry realized in that instant that he had lived his life as one of the snakes. He looks forward to discussing this with Michel over beer.

Harry's challenge is to move beyond mere survival and go forward with the life he has rather than the life he imagined was his. He has lived a shuttered existence since his liberation and neither traveled great distances nor resolved his distrust of the Japanese. The beautiful ending of the Empress of Asia opens Harry to the greater world and to the love of others.

Note: Foreign terms are used throughout the book and, while the book doesn't contain a glossary, Schroeder has provided one at his website.
http://www.adamlewisschroeder.com/empressglossary.php show less

Though it starts quietly with the reflections of Harry Winslow soon after the death of his wife Lily, Empress of Asia is filled with whirlwind experiences that take him from a small town in British Columbia to the Asian Pacific during World War II.

The story is told in three parts - and all told as an internal conversation of Harry with his deceased wife. That technique works well in the first portion of the book, less well during the lengthy second portion as Harry recounts his Asian show more experiences, and, at times, it is annoying during the third portion, as Harry repeatedly wonders if Lily had "seen this" or "was familiar with that" during his surprising discoveries about Lily's life.

Harry's initial descriptions of the chaos in the Pacific during World War II draw one in effectively, including his explanation of how he met Lily amidst that chaos - however, this section of the book, the lengthiest one by far, lost steam for me, especially in the latter portions.

The final section of the book brings resolution to the mystery we encounter in the first few pages, providing surprise, sadness, and wonder about the challenge of moving forward while reflecting on the past. It is an ending that raises interesting questions in one's own life even if the life events and final twist are not as spectacular as those in Harry and Lily's.

The book was generally a good read. Like the music of The Tragically Hip, it is (in some ways) refreshingly Canadian - which is a very positive thing.

A bit of a minor note: the music of Fats Waller plays a role in the story, but it is a role that does not resonate with me, despite my love of music and the impact of music in my own life. In fact, Harry's "top of mind" recall of the music in times of crisis, chaos and resolution is unconvincing - the associated passion seemed an aside to the story (in my mind) rather than an integral piece of understanding Harry.

A personal note: It was wonderful to read the name of Gordon Sinclair - a great reminder of watching Front Page Challenge on CHCH television out of Hamilton, Ontario while spending summers on Long Point, Ontario as a kid. Fred Davis hosting - Gordon Sinclair as one of the panelists - often Pierre Burton, too. Great stuff.

Final note: This review is based on an Advance Uncorrected Proof provided by Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press show less