January 2009 Host: Jennie

Beside A Burning Sea by John Shors

Summary

This story of romance, passion, and adventure takes place on an island in the South Pacific in 1942. A United States hospital ship is sunk by a Japanese torpedo with nine survivors able to swim to a deserted island. The survivors include the captain of the ship, his wife and her sister who are both nurses, an officer, a Japanese prisoner who cannot help but recall the horrors of fighting for the Japanese, Jake a black farmer who befriends Ratu, a young Fijian stowaway boy, another nurse, and Roger - the villain. The author did an excellent job of developing the majority of the characters’ complex and differing personalities and each of their introspections of the horrors of World War II. During the eighteen days they spend on the island, we are privy to the forming of romantic as well as platonic relationships among the nine survivors. Roger, the novel’s antagonist, is evil through and through and somewhat predictably, his inherent malevolence is explained by a few childhood incidents. He is the one who betrays all of the other survivors. This is a very entertaining novel and the author even incorporates his own haikus at the beginning of each chapter.

Discussion

-Everyone enjoyed this novel although we did agree that a lot of it was…well…a bit sappy, e.g. the love story between Annie and Akira - only the Lifetime channel would be interested in a movie based on this book.

-The author painted a vivid picture of both the island and the hospital ship which pulls the reader in and makes them feel as if they were there.

-Two of the characters, Scarlet and Nate, were never really developed and operated at the periphery of the novel.

-None of us really connected with any of the women portrayed in the novel - the two nurses that were sisters were fairly opposite - one was strong and had a stoic personality while the other was fearful of everything. The third female nurse developed an unusual affinity with the birds on the island - which was just plain weird.

-Roger was a very effective villain. He spent most of the time imagining how he would unmercilessly kill everyone on the island.

-We thought the author was trying to set something up when he didn’t immediately reveal that Jake was African-American - but nothing ever came of it. We enjoyed Jake and Ratu’s father-son relationship more than any other relationship that developed in the story.

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