The Caprices [Paperback]

Sabina Murray (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 10, 2007

Winner of the PEN/Faulkner award for fiction in 2003,The Capricesis a collection of stories artfully told across the theatre of the Pacific Campaign of World War II. An Anglo-Indian cavalryman, his homeland on the brink of revolution, finds himself in Malaysia fighting to protect British interests. Two soldiers lost in the jungle with a Japanese prisoner confront their prejudices toward each other, and the nature of being American. An island witnesses the passing of history from Magellan, to Amelia Earhart, to the dropping of the atomic bomb. With exquisite lyricism tempered by a journalist’s eye for detail, Murray shines light on the tangle of battles created by that conflict, the violent reach across the generations, the shattering reverberations in memory. With this collection, Sabina Murray established herself as a passionate and wise voice of literary fiction.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

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 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

A caprice in wartime may be a sinister thing or a necessary distraction, and in this shrewd, striking debut collection of nine short stories by novelist (Slow Burn) and screenwriter Murray it is frequently both. The characters of these cleverly crafted tales are bound by the atrocities of WWII in the Pacific and forced to make decisions in situations where hope is in short supply. The survivors are supposedly the lucky ones, though veterans like Australian Bob Cairns in "Walkabout" is horrified to learn he "would only bring the war back to a place that he had hoped to protect from it. He would no longer be a person but a reminder of absences.... He was now an ugly thing, a sore upon the landscape, a battered body which told a story that no one wished to hear." Like Cairns, Murray displays the ravages of war, but she has full confidence in the power of her storytelling ability. Attempting to tell the truth, no matter how gut-wrenching, she also handles humor with laudable finesse, using it to separate those characters who can still appreciate it from those who now find laughter unfamiliar and awkward. In "Guinea," American soldiers Francino and Burns are lost in the jungles of New Guinea with an emaciated Japanese POW who offers them some unexpected comic relief. The narrator of "Intramuros" entertains the reader with mini-tales of her mixed-heritage family; a distant cousin, Benito, is legendary for looting a store "liberated" by the Japanese and trusting a stranger with his prize, a bicycle, while he returns for more. War is an unusual subject for a young female writer; with each piece, Murray proves to be increasingly exceptional. Author tour.

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press (June 10, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 080214313X
• ISBN-13: 978-0802143136
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,228,287 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Perfect Story Collection, July 25, 2007

By 

Reader (Boston) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Caprices (Paperback)

The Caprices is the best book of stories published in the US in the last twenty years, and Grove Press should be congratulated for the wise reprint. In addition to being a great read from cover-to-cover, the book functions as a how-to manual for anyone interested in the short story. The title story is unlike anything else--a war story that draws on the Gothic, while "Guinea" is comic, tragic, and one of the best stories about baseball ever written, bringing together an Italian-American GI, an Irish-American GI, and a very surprising Japanese POW. "Order of Precedence," one of the great works of post-colonial literature, tells the story of a gifted soldier and polo player, a man of Indian and Scottish descent, whose fate is determined by a jealous Englishman. "Walkaabout" documents the experiences of Australian soldiers on the infamous Burma-Siam Railroad, while "Intramuros" links together a string of stories from the author's family in Manila during the Japanes occupation--a comic treatment of some very harrowing subject matter. The last story, "Position," is a post-modern romp through the history of a Pacific island, and it has already been included in the newest Norton Anthology. This is a must-read for anyone interested in the short story, world history, the effects of colonialism, or simply a great read

8 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful, June 17, 2002

By 

A. Ross (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Caprices (Paperback)

The nine short stories here are all linked to the Pacific Campaign of WWII (Malaysia, the Philippines, New Guinea), encompassing the native civilians and combatants as well as the Japanese, American, and Australian soldiers who traveled far to fight each other there. More than anything, the stories are about the suffering-both physical and psychological-of both those who fought and those who were bystanders. Occasionally these drift into a surreal realm (not magical realist) inhabited by the dead and the walking spiritually dead.

"Order of Precedence" is a deceptively simple tale of Harry Gillen, an Anglo-Indian officer interred in the Changi POW camp (made famous by real life POW James Clavell's novel King Rat). When his former commander in India appears as a POW, Gillen's story flashes back to his days in India, where he is an officer, but never accepted as a full gentleman. "Guinea" follows two American soldiers, Francino and Burns, lost in the jungle of New Guinea, they bicker and take a Japanese prisoner. "Walkabout" is about an Australian veteran who survives life as a POW building the railroad to Burma (as seen in Pierre Boulle's book and the subsequent film, The Bridge on the River Kwai). After the war, as a rancher, he is haunted by those who never came home from the jungle. "Folly" tells of a Dutch plantation manger, the Indonesian guerilla leader who tries to buy guns from him, and how the war changed their lives. "Colossus" is similar to "Walkabout " in that it's main character is a former POW (this one American) who will never escape the horrors of being a POW. in old age, he is able to repay the Filipino who rescued him from the Bataan Death March (which is well-described in the history Ghost Soldiers).

"Intramuros" is a series of brief vignettes about a Manilla family, and how the war affected it. It's the most seemingly autobiographical story in the collection, but also the least strictly constructed. "The Caprices" is also about a Filipino family, and the terror of the Japanese occupation brings to them. Set in the early '70s, "Yashamita's Gold" is a mini-thriller about missing treasure from the war. Japanese Gen. Yashamita purportedly had a massive hoard of gold and jewels looted from occupied territories that vanished during the tail end of the war. The story tells of the possible surfacing of that treasure and how it affects two Japanese in hiding in Manila many years later. Finally, the most fanciful story of the collection is "Position," which posits a tired Amelia Earhart scouting Saipan in 1937 and being captured by the Japanese.

These stories are an invaluable addition to WWII literature, all the more remarkable for being written by a woman several generations removed from the war. They provide a rare glimpse into the impact of the Pacific Campaign on the Filipino people, and a haunting reminder of how long war's wounds can linger.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Atmospheric, superb, delicately well written, June 12, 2006

A Kid's Review

This review is from: The Caprices (Paperback)

Murray's descriptive novel of war-torn SEAsia is full of life's ironies. Though the number of stories is meager, but the richness the tales evoke is heady and captures the horrors and human frailty during those trying times.

She is one of the best Filipino-American authors in English so far.