Review: Poignant tale
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 02 11, 2013
Without doubt this is an excellent read but I sadly feel it fails to deliver on two counts. Firstly, the blurb gives the very clear impression that this is a biographical tale of a real person. Well, if it is, why does the author give the usual disclaimer about it being entirely fictitious in the preamble?The second grumble concerns the grammar errors. I initially thought that this was a translational thing but, given that the account is fictitious, there really can not (sic) be any excuse for this.However, it's still an important book that fills in a period of history which, for some reason, has been completely forgotten. Atrocities were committed by the Japanese against civilians on a massive scale and they weren't 'just' the excesses of one or two insane individuals. If we're to learn from this officially-sanctioned cruelty and do honour to the victims, what happened must be properly recorded.I'm not sure the story precisely captured the true horror of what it must have been like for these women but then perhaps nothing can.'Comfort Girl' didn't have quite the level of detail that a book like Wild Swans has which is why I'm not giving if 5 stars. I'd still recommend it, though.