The Caprices

With none of the nostalgia that mars so many books and movies about World War II, Sabina Murray's short story collection The Caprices covers the unfamiliar territory of the Pacific Campaign--Malaysia, the Philippines, New Guinea--and the all-too-familiar territory of human suffering. Most of Murray's characters are victims of circumstance. In the title story, a once-wealthy family lives in the shell of its grand house in Manila, guarding a demented young girl named Trinidad and trying not to attract the attention of the Japanese soldiers who have occupied the town. In "Order of Precedence," a young Indian officer in the British Army encounters his former commander at the prisoner-of-war camp where they have both been detained. Lieutenant Gillen is starving and diseased, but he will live; Major Berystede is dying. Once, in recognition of the younger man's polo skills, Berystede had proposed him for admission to the whites-only Officers Club. Now, through his parched lips, Berystede tells Gillen: "I finally found a club that would take us both." Though these nine stories are not linked, they can be read as variations on the theme of the unheroic reality of war. Brilliant and affecting, The Caprices merits comparison to The English Patient and, in a different vein but with a similar breadth of reach, David Mitchell's Ghostwritten. --Regina Marler