Back To Bangka by Georgina Banks

Posted on September 16, 2023 by Jennifer Jones

Back To Bangka
by
Georgina Banks

Summary

Bangka Strait, Indonesia, 1942 . Allied ships are evacuating thousands in flight from Singapore, the island having fallen to Japanese Imperial forces. Facing terrifying assaults by fighter planes, one ship, the Vyner Brooke , is badly bombed and sinks. Its survivors swim or paddle for hours to the nearest land, a beach on Bangka Island, parched, many dreadfully injured.

One of the survivors is Australian Army nurse Dorothy ‘Bud’ Elmes, the great-aunt of Georgina Banks. Bud makes it to the island, where she, colleagues and a matron tend to the wounded as a plan is formulated. But it is soon discovered the place is occupied by Japanese forces, and two days later they arrive on the beach.

Seventy-five years on, Georgina receives an invitation to a memorial service for her great-aunt. She knows little of the national history buried in her family but as she retraces Bud’s steps in Indonesia, and then deep in archives back in Australia, she is left making sense of half-truths and confronting the likelihood that she may never know exactly what unfolded on the beach on that devastating day.

Back to Bangka is a deeply moving intergenerational family story; a gripping retelling and investigation of events that throw a spotlight on women in wartime – in their vulnerability and profound strength. – Goodreads

Published June 2023. 327 pages

My Thoughts

I read this book very quickly, as once I started reading, it was extremely compelling, and I couldn’t put it down. Even though I had researched the of the story of the Bangka Island Massacre, and had written about it, there was information in this book that I hadn’t come across previously.

The Road to Bangka is the story of the tragedy of a family who sent their daughter, a trained nurse, off to the war to care for those injured in the war. The author sets out to uncover information that was previously not known about, but as the story goes on, she asks the question of whether it really is necessary to find out what exactly happened, in all it’s detail. Is it enough for the families, just to know that their loved ones were killed. Do they really need to know the details of what happened to them in their final hours and minutes.

Back to Bangka is not a dry war history book. It is about one person’s mission to find out exactly what happened after the nurses were captured. This book, about a family who lost their daughter in the Bangka Island Massacre, is told with compassion, love and care. The reader is made aware of the lasting impact of that loss over the next generations of the families.

I was drawn to read The Road to Bangka because a family member of mine, was one of the nurses on the Vyner Brooke. She was drowned, when the Vyner Brook was bombed. Since learning what happened to the nurses who survived and managed to get to shore, I have always felt that our nurse was fortunate not to have survived the bombing, only to be killed in a horrifying way, by the Japanese.

If interested, here is a link to a post that I wrote on my blog, Tracking Down The Family, about the Bangka Island Massacre

52 Week Book Challenge

I chosen this book for Prompt 23 of the 52 Book Club’s Reading Challenge.

Star Rating

Please note that my star rating system isn’t at all based on literary merit, but is based on my enjoyment of the book.
For me a book that gets five stars, is a book that I really enjoyed, and found difficult to put down.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Unputdownable. Would read it again.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Fantastic read. Not to be missed

⭐️⭐️⭐️ Enjoyable. Would recommend it.

⭐️⭐️ Wouldn’t read it again.

⭐️ Don’t recommend this book at all.

The books mentioned in this post are of my own choice and have not been sent to me to review. My opinions are my own and I receive no renumeration at all for them.

L: Lawson by Grantlee Kieza #atozchallenge

Posted on April 14, 2023 by Jennifer Jones

The Blogging from A to Z April Challenge is for bloggers who wish to participate by publishing a blog post every day in April except for Sundays. Each blog post will focus on a letter of the alphabet. For example April 1 will be A, April 2 will be B and on it goes. By the end of April, a blog post for every letter of the alphabet will have been posted. My theme for 2023 is Book Reviews.

You can read my reviews without worrying about spoilers. My reviews are quite brief and I give away nothing more than you would read on the back cover or on Goodreads.

LAWSON
BY
GRANTLEE KIEZA

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

Summary

“Henry Lawson captured the heart and soul of Australia and its people with greater clarity and truth than any writer before him. Born on the goldfields in 1867, he became the voice of ordinary Australians, recording the hopes, dreams and struggles of bush battlers and slum dwellers, of fierce independent women, foreign fathers and larrikin mates.

Lawson wrote from the heart, documenting what he saw from his earliest days as a poor, lonely, handicapped boy with warring parents on a worthless farm, to his years as a literary lion, then as a hopeless addict cadging for drinks on the streets, and eventually as a prison inmate, locked up in a tiny cell beside murderers. A controversial figure today, he was one of the first writers to shine a light on the hardships faced by Australia’s hard-toiling wives and mothers, and among the first to portray, with sympathy, the despair of Indigenous Australians at the ever-encroaching European tide. His heroic figures such as The Drover’s Wife and the fearless unionists striking out for a better deal helped define Australia’s character, and while still a young man, his storytelling drew comparisons on the world stage with Tolstoy, Gorky and Kipling.

But Henry Lawson’s own life may have been the most compelling saga of all, a heart-breaking tale of brilliance, lost love, self-destruction and madness” – Goodreads

Published in 2021. 512 pages.

My Thoughts

The author definitely tells the story of the life of Henry Lawson, warts and all. There is no glossing over his heavy drinking and the problems he faced in his life, many caused by himself. I have been a fan of Henry Lawson since we read The Drovers Wife at school. I come back to his short stories quite often and always enjoy them, but have never really given much thought to his life. I found it very sad to read about his life, in fact this book brought me to tears in many places.

Henry Lawson is an icon in Australia, but he was flawed, and those flaws are laid out in the book. I really enjoyed reading the back story to his short stories – where he got his ideas from, who might have prompted them, and why he wrote them.

For a fan of Henry Lawson, this book is gold. If you’re not a fan, or not aware of his works, I’m sure you would still enjoy this very well researched book, about a man who had a weakness, but who also had a huge talent for writing.

I would recommend Lawson, without any hesitation at all, as an unputdownable read.

More than 60 pages of bibliography and references.

All books that I review have been purchased by me or borrowed from the library, unless otherwise stated.

Star Rating

Please note that my star rating system isn’t at all based on literary merit, but is based on my enjoyment for the book.
For me a book that gets five stars, is a book that I really enjoyed, and found difficult to put down.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️Unputdownable. Would definitely read again
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️Fantastic read. Not to be missed.
⭐️⭐️⭐️Enjoyable read. Would recommend.
⭐️⭐️Wouldn’t read again
⭐️Don’t recommend this book again

Find me here: Facebook and Instagram and Goodreads

Images and author information: Goodreads

You can find my other blogs here:
Next Phase In Fitness & Life and Tracking Down The Family

K: Kin: A Real Person’s History Of Our Nation by Nick Brodie #atozchallenge #throwbackthursday

Posted on April 13, 2023 by Jennifer Jones

You can read my reviews without worrying about spoilers. My reviews are quite brief and I give away nothing more than you would read on the back cover or on Goodreads.

Many book bloggers re-post a book review that they have written in the past, under the #throwbackthursday hashtag. I will be joining them in this each Thursday.

The following book review was first published here in April 2020. This is a book that I enjoyed, and I feel warrants highlighting again.

KIN
BY
NICK BRODIE

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Summary

From convicts, goldminers and sailors, to high country horsemen, nurses and soldiers – and almost everyone in between – KIN is about generations of real people living real lives. Join historian and archaeologist, Nick Brodie, as he traces his family back to their first arrivals in Australia. As their lives intersect, KIN provides a unique historical insight into Australia’s past: colonies grow and wars are fought as Nick follows his people and their children across land and sea, in their everyday occupations and through their hardships and most memorable events. Follow Nick’s journey to discover how his kinfolk lived, the bigger story of the history of Australia, as their stories become both his and ours. – blurb

Published 2019
Paperback, 448 pages

My Thoughts

The author uses stories about his own ancestors to create a full and thorough explanation of Australian history. I really enjoyed this book, but as family history and Australian history is my passion, be aware that I could be biased. I loved the ancestry charts included and really enjoyed following the lives of the author’s ancestors. Even though Kin is a very thorough history of Australia and of his own ancestors, it is very easy to follow.

Kin is based on very thorough research, both ancestral and historical. My only criticism would be that I’d have liked to have seen a list of sources at the back of the book. But this is addressed by the author at the end, where he gives his reasons for not including them.

Key to Star Rating

Find me here: Facebook and Instagram and Goodreads

Images and author information: Goodreads

You can find my other blogs here:
Next Phase In Fitness & Life and Tracking Down The Family

F: Flesh Wounds by Richard Glover #audiobook #atozchallenge

Posted on April 7, 2023 by Jennifer Jones

You can read my reviews without worrying about spoilers. My reviews are quite brief and I give away nothing more than you would read on the back cover or on Goodreads.

FLESH WOUNDS
BY
RICHARD GLOVER
#audiobook narrated by Richard Glover

⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

SUMMARY

“Richard Glover’s favourite dinner party game is called ‘Who’s Got the Weirdest Parents?’. It’s a game he always thinks he’ll win. There was his mother, a deluded snob, who made up large swathes of her past and who ran away with Richard’s English teacher, a Tolkien devotee, nudist and stuffed-toy collector. There was his father, a distant alcoholic, who ran through a gamut of wives, yachts and failed dreams. And there was Richard himself, a confused teenager, vulnerable to strange men, trying to find a family he could belong to. As he eventually accepted, the only way to make sense of the present was to go back to the past – but beware of what you might find there. Truth can leave wounds – even if they are only flesh wounds”. -goodreads

Published 2015. 305 pages

MY THOUGHTS

This book is primarily about Richard’s parents. We follow Richard from a small child to his teenage years, early adulthood and as a parent himself.

If, like me, you think that you probably have the strangest family out there, then this book is for you. By the time I finished reading this book, I realised that this family of Richards, were much stranger than mine, and I had never thought that possible.

Flesh Wounds is part family memoir and partly a look at life in Australia in the 1970s. I really enjoyed reading about the 70s, as many memories came back to me. Much of the story is both very funny and also very sad. Richard was so honest and vulnerable in his writing that at times, it made me squirm.

This audio book was narrated by the author, which I enjoyed. I usually enjoy a memoir that is read by the author, especially if they have a voice that is easy to listen to, as is Richard’s voice. Richard Glover is a presenter on ABC Radio.

Star Rating

Find me here: Facebook and Instagram and Goodreads

Images and author information: Goodreads

You can find my other blogs here:
Next Phase In Fitness & Life and Tracking Down The Family