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The Divine Wind
On the eve of WWII, suspicion runs rampant in Hartley Penrose's small town. Even though they've done nothing wrong, the town is turning against its native Japanese residents - including Mitsy Sennosuke, the girl Hart loves despite himself. The result is a wrenching, unforgettable story of romance, betrayal, and the turmoils that rock both the world and the heart.
160 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1998
32 people are currently reading
310 people want to read
About the author
Garry Disher
92 books721 followersGarry Disher was born in 1949 and grew up on his parents' farm in South Australia.
He gained post graduate degrees from Adelaide and Melbourne Universities. In 1978 he was awarded a creative writing fellowship to Stanford University, where he wrote his first short story collection. He travelled widely overseas, before returning to Australia, where he taught creative writing, finally becoming a full time writer in 1988. He has written more than 40 titles, including general and crime fiction, children's books, textbooks, and books about the craft of writing.
He gained post graduate degrees from Adelaide and Melbourne Universities. In 1978 he was awarded a creative writing fellowship to Stanford University, where he wrote his first short story collection. He travelled widely overseas, before returning to Australia, where he taught creative writing, finally becoming a full time writer in 1988. He has written more than 40 titles, including general and crime fiction, children's books, textbooks, and books about the craft of writing.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 81 reviews
December 31, 2024
Garry Disher is a favourite author of mine and I am accustomed to reading his crime novels. This small book was gifted to me by a good friend and I read it straight away. It was so different from anything else of his that I have read.
It turns out this is a YA book but I found heaps in it for an adult reader too. Especially ones like me who grew up in the UK and never did Australian history in school. I have been to Broome and learned about the history of the pearling industry and the amazing Japanese divers who could go down so deep and stay under so long. However, I had never become aware of how the war affected Broome and its residents. That gap in my knowledge made this little book doubly interesting for me.
In fact I enjoyed this book five stars worth! The characters were real not pretentious or schmaltzy. The setting was excellently portrayed and the way people behaved once war came to their town was true to life. Even the love story was real and the ending demonstrated this completely. I loved it.
It turns out this is a YA book but I found heaps in it for an adult reader too. Especially ones like me who grew up in the UK and never did Australian history in school. I have been to Broome and learned about the history of the pearling industry and the amazing Japanese divers who could go down so deep and stay under so long. However, I had never become aware of how the war affected Broome and its residents. That gap in my knowledge made this little book doubly interesting for me.
In fact I enjoyed this book five stars worth! The characters were real not pretentious or schmaltzy. The setting was excellently portrayed and the way people behaved once war came to their town was true to life. Even the love story was real and the ending demonstrated this completely. I loved it.
November 8, 2024
Michael and Ita Penrose had lived in Broome, Western Australia a lot of years – their two children, Hartley and Alice were friends with Mitsy Sennosuke, the Japanese daughter of Zeke and Sadako. Michael was a pearling master, running six luggers which were crewed by a mixture of nationalities, but always with a Japanese diver aboard each lugger. Zeke worked for Michael as the diver on his leading lugger, the Ita Penrose - the love of Michael and Ita preserved by words – but Ita wasn’t happy in Broome; she missed her home in England and her elderly parents.
Mitsy was born in Broome, but the fact that she was of Japanese descent irritated Ita – the children played anywhere but each other’s homes, often spending time in the darkness of the movies together. Hart fell in love with Mitsy’s beauty and good humour during that time and the two of them became very close.
When Hart was seventeen, Ita returned to England to be with her dying father – it was 1939 and World War II followed shortly afterwards. And so began the prejudice and hatred toward the Japanese – many who had lived in Broome their whole lives; been born in Australia; hadn’t even been to Japan. But the internment started and friends of long standing were locked up and looked upon with suspicion.
In an Australia devastated by war, the lives of Mitsy, Hart and Alice were destined to change – they grew up fast; adapted to the changes quickly though not seamlessly. As they left their childhoods behind, their futures looked increasingly bleak – would they remain friends? And would they survive the horrors of war?
The Divine Wind by Aussie author Garry Disher was first published in 1998 and has been republished many times since. It’s a wonderful little book which looks at friendship and the changes that occur through no fault of our own. I thoroughly enjoyed looking at the Broome of WW2, the historical aspect of it and the coming of age of three young people. I have no hesitation in recommending this novel highly.
Mitsy was born in Broome, but the fact that she was of Japanese descent irritated Ita – the children played anywhere but each other’s homes, often spending time in the darkness of the movies together. Hart fell in love with Mitsy’s beauty and good humour during that time and the two of them became very close.
When Hart was seventeen, Ita returned to England to be with her dying father – it was 1939 and World War II followed shortly afterwards. And so began the prejudice and hatred toward the Japanese – many who had lived in Broome their whole lives; been born in Australia; hadn’t even been to Japan. But the internment started and friends of long standing were locked up and looked upon with suspicion.
In an Australia devastated by war, the lives of Mitsy, Hart and Alice were destined to change – they grew up fast; adapted to the changes quickly though not seamlessly. As they left their childhoods behind, their futures looked increasingly bleak – would they remain friends? And would they survive the horrors of war?
The Divine Wind by Aussie author Garry Disher was first published in 1998 and has been republished many times since. It’s a wonderful little book which looks at friendship and the changes that occur through no fault of our own. I thoroughly enjoyed looking at the Broome of WW2, the historical aspect of it and the coming of age of three young people. I have no hesitation in recommending this novel highly.
April 26, 2020
‘The Divine Wind’ is a concise account of how paranoia, fear and mistrust created by ‘White Australia’ propaganda during WW2 (in this case, the Japanese air attack on Broome) fanned the flames of racism in our country.
Our main protagonist, Hart, must battle his own prejudices and treachery when his perception of the girl that he supposedly loves (a Japanese girl) changes as the war pits friend against friend and lover against lover.
Garry Disher writes with a fantastic economy of words. This book was a breeze largely due to the fact that there was no filler, everything seemed essential. Unfortunately Hart is largely unlikeable due to his selfishness, jealousy and single mindedness.
Disher’s life experience and wisdom also undermine his attempts to narrate as Hart in 1946 at which point he would be 25 only about 4 or 5 years older than the end of his story. I can’t reconcile the narrator’s level-headedness and high level of self-awareness with that of the boy in the story. It was otherwise a quick and thought-provoking read.
“Friendship is a slippery notion. We lose friends as we change and our friends don’t, or as we form new alliances, as we betray our friends or are ourselves betrayed…”
Our main protagonist, Hart, must battle his own prejudices and treachery when his perception of the girl that he supposedly loves (a Japanese girl) changes as the war pits friend against friend and lover against lover.
Garry Disher writes with a fantastic economy of words. This book was a breeze largely due to the fact that there was no filler, everything seemed essential. Unfortunately Hart is largely unlikeable due to his selfishness, jealousy and single mindedness.
Disher’s life experience and wisdom also undermine his attempts to narrate as Hart in 1946 at which point he would be 25 only about 4 or 5 years older than the end of his story. I can’t reconcile the narrator’s level-headedness and high level of self-awareness with that of the boy in the story. It was otherwise a quick and thought-provoking read.
“Friendship is a slippery notion. We lose friends as we change and our friends don’t, or as we form new alliances, as we betray our friends or are ourselves betrayed…”
April 12, 2009
Argh! I really wish my school would pick some decent books for us poor students to read! I am an absolute book nerd, and I think I can appreciate a wide range of genres, but this was painful.
I read it in a day - not because it was a page turner, but because I could not wait to get it over and done with.
Only read it if you are absolutely desperate.
Just my opinion.
I read it in a day - not because it was a page turner, but because I could not wait to get it over and done with.
Only read it if you are absolutely desperate.
Just my opinion.
October 21, 2014
This was good...different though...
Its funny beacuse the ending imlies so much and is so confusing at the same time...Yet in a funny way it seems as this is the only way that it could end...
Its funny beacuse the ending imlies so much and is so confusing at the same time...Yet in a funny way it seems as this is the only way that it could end...
January 13, 2019
Far too much telling rather than showing; two dimensional characters and a boring first person narrator. How did this book win any awards?
September 11, 2023
The Divine Wind is a thoughtful and eloquent tale about love, fear, and racism set in an Australian coastal village as WW2 approaches. It is marketed as a young adult novel, which it is, but the depth of its characters and its complex take on humanity give it a richness that will appeal to both the young and old.
July 24, 2013
15 July 2002 THE DIVINE WIND: A LOVE STORY by Gary Disher, Arthur Levine Books/Scholastic, May 2002
"Gonna lay down my sword and shield
Down by the riverside
Ain't gonna study war no more"
War is such stupid, insane, and horrible shit. I felt this way as a kid in the '60s, watching the evening new reports from Vietnam. Back in those days of adolescence and assassinations, my emerging heroes were calling for us to "Make Love, Not War." I've felt these sentiments resurface time and again throughout my life as one crazy madman or faction or government after another (including my own country's government) starts gearing up to slaughter yet another group of people. And I'm especially feeling this way this morning after being bashed about by THE DIVINE WIND: A LOVE STORY.
Who thought up war anyway? Sometimes when I read books that have bullies in them--tales of contemporary times or slavery or the Civil Rights movement or even the Middle Ages--I'm convinced the nature of some portion of humankind has been and will always be that of lethal aggressor. It all reminds me of certain dairy goats I've owned and observed over the years, who spend their lives seemingly compelled to repeatedly and relentlessly put everybody else in their places. Fortunately, the goats' technology limits them to butting heads (or butting butts), so that the victim du jour--the weakest, the least aggressive, or the convenient scapegoat--need only endure discomfort long enough for the troublemaker to eventually get bored and hungry.
It seems that the causes of men's wars have always fallen into two categories: "You're different!" and "I say it's mine, not yours!"
The proposition that there's always been aggression against those who are different is adroitly portrayed by Jon Scieszka in "Homo...Sapiens?" his story of a Neanderthal-bashing party from the TOMORROWLAND collection:
" '...And what's with those big brows, flat heads, and bowed legs? I know chimps who walk a straighter line. That's not human.'
More uneasy shouts and murmurs.
'Did you hear what the Neanderthal said to the maggot chewing on the three-month-old mammoth carcass? You gonna finish that?'
A relieved burst of rowdy laughter...
'I think the only way to make it to the next Big Pile of Rocks is to get rid of the competition before they get rid of us. What do you think?'
The man raises his index finger once more.
'We're number one! We're number one! We're number one!' The chant builds again. A few men raise flaked, stone tipped spears. Others pound clubs. Someone twirls an ax murderously overhead..."
As for fighting over whose is whose, I have always been impressed by the passage that I first read many years ago near the beginning of Michner's ALASKA, in which a family of early people learn from their elder about the movement of mankind away from the hot and temperate climes as population pressures mounted: "And then once more, in the time of the Ancient One's great-great-great-grandmother, or even further back, competition for favorable sites recurred, but now it was the less able who were forced to move on, leaving the most fit to hold on to the temperate zones. This meant that in the Northern Hemisphere the subarctic areas began to be filled with people who had been evicted from the more congenial climates. Always the pressure came from the warmer lands to the south, and always it ended with people being forced to live on cold and arid lands which could barely support them."
Having always been overwhelmed by the complexity and contradictions of World War II, I am relieved to have been born a generation too late to have had to deal with it firsthand. At the same time, that complexity has long made World War II a topic about which I've read and been fascinated.
THE DIVINE WIND: A LOVE STORY is a tense and riveting read set on the northwest Australian coast at the dawn of the Second World War. I don't care that its fiction--I will be clenching my fists for days as I recall the results of the havoc wrecked by the insanity of the adult world upon the story's three young central characters: Hart, who narrates the story, his sister Alice, and Alice's best friend Mitsy Sennosuke--a girl of Japanese parents.
Before moving to California as a young man, I had never heard of the Japanese internment during World War II--nope, it wasn't ever mentioned in the history books they used back on the East Coast in my youth. So, I am not at all surprised to learn from THE DIVINE WIND that a similar "procedure" took place in Australia. Nor am I shocked by the manner in which the Australian white supremacists in the book treat individuals of the various nonwhite groups. But the way in which those prejudices and the War engulf the three young people and totally screw up what should have been their idyllic young lives brought me to the verge of utter despair as I read page after page of Hart's touching love story:
"I fell in love with Mitsy in the darkness of the tin-walled cinema in Sheba Lane, where cowboys roamed the range and airmen spies slipped away from foreign countries in the light of the moon, and great white hunters saved beautiful women from maddened rogue elephants.
"In the daylight, Mitsy was a separate being, slim and restless and full of jokes and mischief like Alice, but when the lights were dimmed and the screen glowed with lovers and heroes, she would grow quiet and still, and settle in her seat, and imperceptibly shift until her shoulder and knee touched mine. Alice, on the other side of her, would crane her head around and meet my gaze, but never say anything, or tease, just as Mitsy would never acknowledge the intimacy when the lights came on at the end but simply treat me as one of the gang again. I sometimes thought that I dreamed of her."
In stark contrast to the other white adult characters, Hart and Alice's father, Michael Penrose, is the one that I'd want to know. A complex, good-hearted guy who makes one awful mistake, he repeatedly stands up and speaks loudly for what is right. In addition, the colorful, multiethnic supporting cast is a lively crowd that had me smiling despite the horrors that they frequently bore the brunt of.
THE DIVINE WIND: A LOVE STORY takes us to a rugged and beautiful place at a tough time in history and introduces us to three young people who I hope are still out there somewhere--old and at peace.
Richie Partington, MLIS
Richie's Picks http://richiespicks.com
BudNotBuddy@aol.com
Moderator http://groups.yahoo.com/group/middle_... http://slisweb.sjsu.edu/people/facult...
"Gonna lay down my sword and shield
Down by the riverside
Ain't gonna study war no more"
War is such stupid, insane, and horrible shit. I felt this way as a kid in the '60s, watching the evening new reports from Vietnam. Back in those days of adolescence and assassinations, my emerging heroes were calling for us to "Make Love, Not War." I've felt these sentiments resurface time and again throughout my life as one crazy madman or faction or government after another (including my own country's government) starts gearing up to slaughter yet another group of people. And I'm especially feeling this way this morning after being bashed about by THE DIVINE WIND: A LOVE STORY.
Who thought up war anyway? Sometimes when I read books that have bullies in them--tales of contemporary times or slavery or the Civil Rights movement or even the Middle Ages--I'm convinced the nature of some portion of humankind has been and will always be that of lethal aggressor. It all reminds me of certain dairy goats I've owned and observed over the years, who spend their lives seemingly compelled to repeatedly and relentlessly put everybody else in their places. Fortunately, the goats' technology limits them to butting heads (or butting butts), so that the victim du jour--the weakest, the least aggressive, or the convenient scapegoat--need only endure discomfort long enough for the troublemaker to eventually get bored and hungry.
It seems that the causes of men's wars have always fallen into two categories: "You're different!" and "I say it's mine, not yours!"
The proposition that there's always been aggression against those who are different is adroitly portrayed by Jon Scieszka in "Homo...Sapiens?" his story of a Neanderthal-bashing party from the TOMORROWLAND collection:
" '...And what's with those big brows, flat heads, and bowed legs? I know chimps who walk a straighter line. That's not human.'
More uneasy shouts and murmurs.
'Did you hear what the Neanderthal said to the maggot chewing on the three-month-old mammoth carcass? You gonna finish that?'
A relieved burst of rowdy laughter...
'I think the only way to make it to the next Big Pile of Rocks is to get rid of the competition before they get rid of us. What do you think?'
The man raises his index finger once more.
'We're number one! We're number one! We're number one!' The chant builds again. A few men raise flaked, stone tipped spears. Others pound clubs. Someone twirls an ax murderously overhead..."
As for fighting over whose is whose, I have always been impressed by the passage that I first read many years ago near the beginning of Michner's ALASKA, in which a family of early people learn from their elder about the movement of mankind away from the hot and temperate climes as population pressures mounted: "And then once more, in the time of the Ancient One's great-great-great-grandmother, or even further back, competition for favorable sites recurred, but now it was the less able who were forced to move on, leaving the most fit to hold on to the temperate zones. This meant that in the Northern Hemisphere the subarctic areas began to be filled with people who had been evicted from the more congenial climates. Always the pressure came from the warmer lands to the south, and always it ended with people being forced to live on cold and arid lands which could barely support them."
Having always been overwhelmed by the complexity and contradictions of World War II, I am relieved to have been born a generation too late to have had to deal with it firsthand. At the same time, that complexity has long made World War II a topic about which I've read and been fascinated.
THE DIVINE WIND: A LOVE STORY is a tense and riveting read set on the northwest Australian coast at the dawn of the Second World War. I don't care that its fiction--I will be clenching my fists for days as I recall the results of the havoc wrecked by the insanity of the adult world upon the story's three young central characters: Hart, who narrates the story, his sister Alice, and Alice's best friend Mitsy Sennosuke--a girl of Japanese parents.
Before moving to California as a young man, I had never heard of the Japanese internment during World War II--nope, it wasn't ever mentioned in the history books they used back on the East Coast in my youth. So, I am not at all surprised to learn from THE DIVINE WIND that a similar "procedure" took place in Australia. Nor am I shocked by the manner in which the Australian white supremacists in the book treat individuals of the various nonwhite groups. But the way in which those prejudices and the War engulf the three young people and totally screw up what should have been their idyllic young lives brought me to the verge of utter despair as I read page after page of Hart's touching love story:
"I fell in love with Mitsy in the darkness of the tin-walled cinema in Sheba Lane, where cowboys roamed the range and airmen spies slipped away from foreign countries in the light of the moon, and great white hunters saved beautiful women from maddened rogue elephants.
"In the daylight, Mitsy was a separate being, slim and restless and full of jokes and mischief like Alice, but when the lights were dimmed and the screen glowed with lovers and heroes, she would grow quiet and still, and settle in her seat, and imperceptibly shift until her shoulder and knee touched mine. Alice, on the other side of her, would crane her head around and meet my gaze, but never say anything, or tease, just as Mitsy would never acknowledge the intimacy when the lights came on at the end but simply treat me as one of the gang again. I sometimes thought that I dreamed of her."
In stark contrast to the other white adult characters, Hart and Alice's father, Michael Penrose, is the one that I'd want to know. A complex, good-hearted guy who makes one awful mistake, he repeatedly stands up and speaks loudly for what is right. In addition, the colorful, multiethnic supporting cast is a lively crowd that had me smiling despite the horrors that they frequently bore the brunt of.
THE DIVINE WIND: A LOVE STORY takes us to a rugged and beautiful place at a tough time in history and introduces us to three young people who I hope are still out there somewhere--old and at peace.
Richie Partington, MLIS
Richie's Picks http://richiespicks.com
BudNotBuddy@aol.com
Moderator http://groups.yahoo.com/group/middle_... http://slisweb.sjsu.edu/people/facult...
Read
June 16, 2022this book is the most pathetic attempt at portraying adolescent struggles during times of conflict. i felt nothing but disgust directed toward hartley, especially as he pursued mitsy. his narrow-minded opinions and views do nothing but bore the reader, condemning them to a tale of misogynism told from the perspective of a naive, womanizing, and quite frankly oblivious, teenage boy. each chapter is completely unrelated to the last, and there is no common thread or storyline to follow throughout the novel. the themes are confusing and the characters are unnecessarily complicated. i would advise against reading this book, and most certainly advise against recommending it.
May 24, 2023
I had to read this for my English class, and assignment, it wasn’t bad, i just like more romantic books then this genre
September 27, 2020
Was recommended to read Garry Disher's work and am not in the least disappointed. Though clearly aimed at a younger readership the plot is strong and extremely adult in places with a narrative that in no way patronises. Delighted to have found this writer.
August 26, 2021
Young Adult/ Teen
Good read.
Good read.
January 29, 2017
I read this novel so that I could discuss it with my daughter who is studying it this year at school. Unfortunately, I never connected with the first person narrator at all. Basically, to me he never sounded like a person of his age, his motivations were questionable, and he made lots of strange decisions; in other words, he was neither believable nor likeable. And then in a story about World War 2, there really wasn't a lot of action or drama. OK, so there was a ship wreck and a Japanese air attack on a town, but these moments were almost glossed over so that you were barely aware they had happened. Bottom line, I have no idea how this book won all those awards. Maybe it improves when you study it. I'll have to see if my daughter's opinion of it changes at all...
December 27, 2018
I'm a Garry Disher fan to the core and picked up this novel unaware it was a children's book. I'm glad I did. The Divine Wind - another name for Kamikaze - is an apt metaphor for Hartley's rush to self-destruction. Set in WWII Broome in Western Australia, young Hartley is in love with Mitsy daughter of a Japanese pearl diver. The characters are complex, their flaws and virtues captured on the page; the novel is a masterful rendering of the slippery nature of friendship. Disher's descriptions are a delight and although the themes are heavy they are penned with a light hand. I recommend this book not only to teenagers but also to adults.
August 12, 2025
this book was disgraceful. absolutely horrid. the writing style is so dull and tedious that it becomes almost impossible to finish a single paragraph. the protagonist was so frustratingly daft and ignorant towards those who surround him - a womanizing, idiotic teenage boy who only brings chaos. the narration is painstakingly boring and the romance is cold and repetitive. each of the characters show no signs of character development and are so primitive and two-dimensional that it physically invokes pain from the reader. this book certainly deserves an award - an award for being the most dreadful book of all.
November 20, 2017
I’ve always been interested in the history of the Japanese pearl divers and their families in Broome. This is a sweet story of the innocence of young love and how this innocence is corrupted by the outbreak of war.
August 27, 2019
Read it back in Year 12 for school and now read it for uni... It was an okay read, I think all my analysis back in high school has made it an underwhelming read this time...
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November 14, 2020It was just ok...
2.5 stars from me.
2.5 stars from me.
November 19, 2020
Garry Disher’s The Divine Wind is the third book I have read that is set in Broome, Western Australia. It has been reprinted many, many times since its original publication by Hodder Headline in 1998. The edition I read was published by Hachette Children’s Books Australia in 2002. The book won the 1999 New South Wales Premier’s Literary Award for Young People’s Literature, and was short-listed for that year’s Children’s Book Council of Australia Book of the Year Award – Book of the Year: Older Readers.
Through Disher’s The Divine Wind – as well as Simone Lazaroo’s The Australian Fiancé (Picador, 2000, winner of that year’s Western Australian Premier’s Book Award for Fiction) and Christine Piper’s After Darkness (Allen & Unwin, 2014, winner of that year’s The Australian/Vogel’s Literary Award) – I get a glimpse of life in Broome, especially its tropical climate and somewhat isolated yet strategic position on Australia’s Northwest Coast. Also noteworthy is Broome’s pearling industry, which has long relied on the skills and experiences of aboriginal, islander and Japanese divers.
Thus Broome has been a multicultural community since very early on. And, like every other multicultural community across the globe, it is here that friendship and mutual respect as well as prejudice and discrimination exists between people of different ethnic backgrounds. Disher, Lazaroo and Piper have all addressed this issue in their books, but from different angles. In The Australian Fiancé, the nameless first-person narrator is an Eurasian bride from Singapore with a tragic past. In After Darkness, the first-person narrator is Dr Ibaraki from Japan who is also haunted by dark secrets from his past.
In contrast to the protagonists in these two books – individuals from the outside who remain as outsiders throughout their days in Broome – Disher’s protagonist Hart in The Divine Wind is the son of a pearling master, a local. Therefore we are offered a rare opportunity to observe how prejudices and discrimination were formed and allowed – even actively encouraged – to become standardised and widely circulated, eventually taken for granted as a “natural” way of life. In exquisite yet sober prose, Hart describes how war and propaganda slowly and steadily changes people’s perception of others and themselves, turning friends to enemies, tearing families and lovers apart, masquerading cruelty, betrayal and vengeance as loyalty, denying individuals and communities their dignity and basic human rights. It is a wakening call to those followers of the MISCONCEPTION that just because life is the way it is, it cannot and should never be challenged and even changed.
The Divine Wind tells a heart-wrenching story. Like the other two books, it does not offer a happy ending. We are left with these words, that even after the war “it won’t be easy, we may not make it” (p.151). Yet these words are particularly powerful to us, the locals, as they serve as a reminder of our potential to turn ugly and hostile the next time a certain conflict threatens what we are told is and should continue to be the way of our life. We are not allowed to simply lament the misery suffered by the protagonists/outsiders as they leave Australia with their broken hearts and bodies in The Australian Fiancé and After Darkness and then get on happily with our own lives. It is us who live here in this country and it is this multicultural society that we need to stand guard over, against any intolerance and disrespect of anyone among us on the basis of their ethnic, cultural, linguistic and/or religious backgrounds. It is us and only us who can make Australia a better place.
This review was originally published on "Voices under the Sun" blog (https://christinesunflower.com/2018/0...).
Through Disher’s The Divine Wind – as well as Simone Lazaroo’s The Australian Fiancé (Picador, 2000, winner of that year’s Western Australian Premier’s Book Award for Fiction) and Christine Piper’s After Darkness (Allen & Unwin, 2014, winner of that year’s The Australian/Vogel’s Literary Award) – I get a glimpse of life in Broome, especially its tropical climate and somewhat isolated yet strategic position on Australia’s Northwest Coast. Also noteworthy is Broome’s pearling industry, which has long relied on the skills and experiences of aboriginal, islander and Japanese divers.
Thus Broome has been a multicultural community since very early on. And, like every other multicultural community across the globe, it is here that friendship and mutual respect as well as prejudice and discrimination exists between people of different ethnic backgrounds. Disher, Lazaroo and Piper have all addressed this issue in their books, but from different angles. In The Australian Fiancé, the nameless first-person narrator is an Eurasian bride from Singapore with a tragic past. In After Darkness, the first-person narrator is Dr Ibaraki from Japan who is also haunted by dark secrets from his past.
In contrast to the protagonists in these two books – individuals from the outside who remain as outsiders throughout their days in Broome – Disher’s protagonist Hart in The Divine Wind is the son of a pearling master, a local. Therefore we are offered a rare opportunity to observe how prejudices and discrimination were formed and allowed – even actively encouraged – to become standardised and widely circulated, eventually taken for granted as a “natural” way of life. In exquisite yet sober prose, Hart describes how war and propaganda slowly and steadily changes people’s perception of others and themselves, turning friends to enemies, tearing families and lovers apart, masquerading cruelty, betrayal and vengeance as loyalty, denying individuals and communities their dignity and basic human rights. It is a wakening call to those followers of the MISCONCEPTION that just because life is the way it is, it cannot and should never be challenged and even changed.
The Divine Wind tells a heart-wrenching story. Like the other two books, it does not offer a happy ending. We are left with these words, that even after the war “it won’t be easy, we may not make it” (p.151). Yet these words are particularly powerful to us, the locals, as they serve as a reminder of our potential to turn ugly and hostile the next time a certain conflict threatens what we are told is and should continue to be the way of our life. We are not allowed to simply lament the misery suffered by the protagonists/outsiders as they leave Australia with their broken hearts and bodies in The Australian Fiancé and After Darkness and then get on happily with our own lives. It is us who live here in this country and it is this multicultural society that we need to stand guard over, against any intolerance and disrespect of anyone among us on the basis of their ethnic, cultural, linguistic and/or religious backgrounds. It is us and only us who can make Australia a better place.
This review was originally published on "Voices under the Sun" blog (https://christinesunflower.com/2018/0...).
June 1, 2024
this book's saving grace is that it is only 160 pages long.
Whilst I appreciated the extensive research Garry Disher undertook before writing this book, I still did not enjoy this book.
It is an interesting read and does speak about a very specific Australian cultural context that maybe international readers would enjoy learning about but as an Asian Australian immigrant, it read like a high school piece written by a white male.
Also, this was sold as "a wrenching, unforgettable story of romance, betrayal, and the turmoils that rock both the world and the heart".
*spoilers*
The romance was questionable at best, with MMC Hartley Penrose pining over Mitsy for most of the book before he gets hurt and her dad dies and then suddenly she's his nurse and he's horny while she's wiping his leg. babe please calm yourself. Then once he's recovered, they start having sex. Except the whole scene is written in a roundabout way, you never actually see the word dick (at least not to my memory, if i'm wrong then it is forgettable oops) but "his stomach's so sensitive" and his scar is third person in their relationship.
Honestly, I don't HATE the book just heavily dislike it. I wouldn't read this again, but at least I can say I've read it once. My main issue with the book is the relationship/romance between Hart and Mitsy which is half the book anyway so solid 2/5.
Whilst I appreciated the extensive research Garry Disher undertook before writing this book, I still did not enjoy this book.
It is an interesting read and does speak about a very specific Australian cultural context that maybe international readers would enjoy learning about but as an Asian Australian immigrant, it read like a high school piece written by a white male.
Also, this was sold as "a wrenching, unforgettable story of romance, betrayal, and the turmoils that rock both the world and the heart".
*spoilers*
The romance was questionable at best, with MMC Hartley Penrose pining over Mitsy for most of the book before he gets hurt and her dad dies and then suddenly she's his nurse and he's horny while she's wiping his leg. babe please calm yourself. Then once he's recovered, they start having sex. Except the whole scene is written in a roundabout way, you never actually see the word dick (at least not to my memory, if i'm wrong then it is forgettable oops) but "his stomach's so sensitive" and his scar is third person in their relationship.
Honestly, I don't HATE the book just heavily dislike it. I wouldn't read this again, but at least I can say I've read it once. My main issue with the book is the relationship/romance between Hart and Mitsy which is half the book anyway so solid 2/5.
March 12, 2025
In prewar Broome, there were a lot of Japanese and their families working as pearl divers, the whites owning the pearling luggers, and the children got on very well with each other. Hart and Alice’s father owned the lugger on which Zeke, Mitsy’s father worked. On a serious misjudgment he sent the boats out in a storm, Zeke was killed and Hart suffered a crippling leg wound. Hartley and Alice were great friend with Mitsy a Japanese girl, in late adolescence Hartley and Mitzy became lovers. Then the war came. Mitsy and her mother Sadako lived in Hart’s house as shelter from the increasing prejudice against Japanese, but the prejudice crept indoors. The climax came when the Japanese strafed Broome Harbour to devastating effect, sinking many boats including naval vessels. Civilian Japanese were interned, including Australian borne Japanese like Mitsy. The story is about racism, its absence amongst friends brought up together, but when it develops in the case due to war, it poisoned existing deep relationships. The writing is simple, dealing with basic human relationships, vivid, gripping and read in one sitting. It is historically accurate and quite unlike Disher’s other crime genre work. Although it is a young adult novella, this old adult was enthralled.
July 2, 2021
Garry Disher has written a charming novel recounting the effect on Broome, in Western Australia of the World war in the Pacific and the Japanese bombing of boats in the harbour.
It is written as a first person account of the multinational nature of Broome prior to the start of hostilities, with an emphasis on the Japanese who had been living and working in Australia for many years as fishermen and pearl divers.
The attitudes of the white locals to the aboriginal people and the Japanese is typical of the time but I would be interested to know if the Army also took the attitude that these people , especially Aboriginals were a threat to the safety of the community, as stated by an official. Racism was endemic, to the shame of Australians.
I enjoyed the writer's re creation of Broome from the perspective of a local white man, with his Japanese friends, especially MItzy, and an Aboriginal man.
It is a straightforward story and easy reading as well as informative about the history around World War 2. Recommended for people interested in these topics, as well as Broome itself and the pearling industry.
It is written as a first person account of the multinational nature of Broome prior to the start of hostilities, with an emphasis on the Japanese who had been living and working in Australia for many years as fishermen and pearl divers.
The attitudes of the white locals to the aboriginal people and the Japanese is typical of the time but I would be interested to know if the Army also took the attitude that these people , especially Aboriginals were a threat to the safety of the community, as stated by an official. Racism was endemic, to the shame of Australians.
I enjoyed the writer's re creation of Broome from the perspective of a local white man, with his Japanese friends, especially MItzy, and an Aboriginal man.
It is a straightforward story and easy reading as well as informative about the history around World War 2. Recommended for people interested in these topics, as well as Broome itself and the pearling industry.
March 5, 2022
Playlist
Hero (Family of the Year)
My review:
Read for school.
Hero (Family of the Year)
My review:
Read for school.
May 13, 2020
This is a beautiful if brief story of a place and period in Australian history that I'm not very familiar with: Broome in the 1940s. It takes a little while to get to the central romance and wraps up pretty soon after that, but the writing is exquisite, the setting lovingly evoked. Due to its proximity to Australia, the war in the Pacific has always been a subject of fascination for me. Ditto the internment of Italian, German and Japanese civilians during World War II; I recently read an article about the internment of Japanese Americans but know nothing about what happened here. It's disappointing that this quiet little gem could have such a low rating here on Goodreads. Vengeful school students, I suppose. Hell, if quality literature isn't a good way to learn your history, nothing is. I'll definitely be seeking out more of Garry Disher's work.
Read
May 19, 2020This is a love story of an Australian boy, Hartley and a Japanese Australian girl, Misty in a Northern Australian pearl diving town, Broome before WWII. Misty’s father Zeke worked as a pearl diver for Hartley’s father, Michael Penrose the pearling master. The children of these two families grew up together and were good friends to start with but due a tragic pearling accident in the sea Zeke was lost and Hartley was injured badly. As a result of this a drift caused between the friends. It was during this time that Japan attacked Australia and all Japanese immigrants were taken into custody. Michael Primrose gave shelter to Misty and her mother. This at the end resulted in bringing the lovers together and separating them. This story includes all, love, family tragedy, cross cultural drama and wartime tensions.
November 4, 2023
It was heartbreaking to read the same attitudes of the Europeans who colonized Australia had toward t the Aborigines as America has had about African Americans. It was also disconcerting to see that these Australians harbored the same prejudices as Americans had toward the Japanese during World War 2, American attitudes that were a generalized distrust and distain for anyone Asian, starting with the Chinese Exclusion Act.
I didn't realize that this would be a 'coming of age' tale but it actually far beyond that. Disher allows us a glimpse in to Australian life different from movies and television programs. He writes about those who live far from Melbourne, or Sydney, but in small villages and towns in the harsh territories.
I look foreword to reading more by this author.
I didn't realize that this would be a 'coming of age' tale but it actually far beyond that. Disher allows us a glimpse in to Australian life different from movies and television programs. He writes about those who live far from Melbourne, or Sydney, but in small villages and towns in the harsh territories.
I look foreword to reading more by this author.
May 2, 2024
Young Hartley is the son of a pearling master, and they own a business in the pearling town of Broome.
Mitsy the daughter of a Japanese diver Zeke who works on the boats with Michael Penrose (Hart's father).
Best friends Alice and Mitsy do everything together and when finished school they take up nursing. But a freak storm created a boating accident. Michael survived, Hartley was seriously injured, and Zeke did not survive.
Not long after World War II broke out and the Japanese residents were rounded up and jailed. Hartley and Michael fought for Mitsy and her mother to stay and moved them into their house for their safety due to sledging, spat out and rocks thrown.
Mitsy and Hartley fall in love. But will their love survive the War?
Mitsy the daughter of a Japanese diver Zeke who works on the boats with Michael Penrose (Hart's father).
Best friends Alice and Mitsy do everything together and when finished school they take up nursing. But a freak storm created a boating accident. Michael survived, Hartley was seriously injured, and Zeke did not survive.
Not long after World War II broke out and the Japanese residents were rounded up and jailed. Hartley and Michael fought for Mitsy and her mother to stay and moved them into their house for their safety due to sledging, spat out and rocks thrown.
Mitsy and Hartley fall in love. But will their love survive the War?
October 16, 2019
The read was an eye opener. It was nice to read about the different sides of the stories after the Pearl Harbor bombing in the US. Living in the US and volunteering at a Japanese-American museum, I had learnt how it affected thousands of Japanese that moved, lived or was born in the US. I knew they were sent away to internment camps. I did not know that the Pearl Harbor bombing also affected the Japanese community in Australia as well. I also learned more about the bombing of Darwin through this book. Great read overall.
October 20, 2022
An informative and sad story about the second world war in Australia
This is a book about people trying despite the odds that are again them, to.survive injury and pain both physical and emotional. The main characters are an Australian man and a Japanese woman living with her family in Australia, and the changes in their lives when the Japanese army changed the view the Australians had of people they lived with peacefully until.then. It is an uncomfortable but insightful read which helps.one understand what happened between these groups of people during the War.
This is a book about people trying despite the odds that are again them, to.survive injury and pain both physical and emotional. The main characters are an Australian man and a Japanese woman living with her family in Australia, and the changes in their lives when the Japanese army changed the view the Australians had of people they lived with peacefully until.then. It is an uncomfortable but insightful read which helps.one understand what happened between these groups of people during the War.
May 14, 2021
A quick and enjoyable read, set in one of Australia's more 'distant' towns, Broome. I have been there once, and I suspect some of it looked as it did when this book was set. Likely more sealed roads now though.
My only criticism of the book was that I was left wondering if, given time, the relationship strengthened, between Hart and Mitsy. I would like to have known more. An enjoyable read otherwise.
My only criticism of the book was that I was left wondering if, given time, the relationship strengthened, between Hart and Mitsy. I would like to have known more. An enjoyable read otherwise.
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