I really didn't enjoy this book but I can understand its appeal. There is something special about it and I now know a lot more about the history of Malaya around the time of the second world war.
I'm told that this book is based on real people though I don't know enough Singapore history to know who they are. The setting made it more interesting to me as I'm living here now, and I really didn't know a lot about the history of Singapore during the 1930s and war years, so it was also very informative.
I loved this novel and could not put it down (which hasn't happened in quite a while)! For being a long book, there weren't any sections that dragged which was amazing.
I picked this book up from a charity bookshelf back home and brought it out to China with me as i thought it would pass a good while being 736 pages, it was one of those yellowing, battered books left on the shelf, but the storyline caught my eye. Published in 1981 so it was a good while after the events it relates to but I was intrigued.
I first read Tanamera eons ago, when it was first published: a doorstopper of a book, which is my favourite kind of book, especially if it's set in a country I've never been to but would love to visit, would love to have grown up in, makes me want to live in that country, fall in love with it. This book did just that.
I still love this book, however reading it in the 2010's with an adult the attitudes in the 1940's (and 1980's) to homosexuality is quite shocking. I never really noticed the negative words before, now they jump off the page at me.
I bought this book in Singapore, read it and loved it. I have donated the book since, and I wished I kept the book in my library.
Fantastic - I began reading this while on vacation in Mexico. It is compellingly written and I could hardly bear to leave it in the hotel!.
I picked up this book for 30 cents at a secondhand store and am glad I did, because I thoroughly enjoyed it, both as a sweeping historical epic and as a love story. On the first count because of Noel Barber's skill at weaving real events and characters into a work of fiction.
