The Bungalow by Sarah Jio

This is another book recommendation from Twitter though I am not sure if it was someone reading it or if it was on a list of summer reads. And again Twitter was right. This was a good read.

As the back blurb states, The Bungalow by Sarah Jio is "A Sweeping World War II saga of thwarted love, murder, and a long-lost painting."

This is entertainment fiction well done. I say entertainment fiction because I just finished reading Judith Hougen's blog "Art and Entertainment: A Final Word on Sentimentality with Bonus True Confession" where she quotes Makoto Fujimura speaking at an International Arts Movement conference:

Entertainment gives you a predictable pleasure. Art…leads to transformation. It awakens you, rather than just satisfying a craving. We need the arts to awaken us to the realities of the Kingdom of God.

The writing was interesting. Bora Bora came alive with hibiscus, sand, and heat. The story moved quickly and kept you engaged. It may not have transformed how I think about art but it did help me imagine the world through the eyes of a nurse serving in the Pacific during World War II. I enjoyed reading the book by the pool during swim lessons and on the back patio in the sun and in bed as I tried to finish the last few pages before I turned off the light.

The only thing that I did not enjoy about the book was the Prologue. Not because it was not interesting or well written but because I don't enjoy prologues. I end up spending the whole book wondering how she is going to tie it all back to the prologue and missing some of the joy of not knowing how it will end.

I know that prologues don't give everything away and often try to surprise the reader but I still end up spending a lot of my reading through the lens of the prologue instead of just letting the story unfold. But that may just be me and my brain. If there is a puzzle before me I need to solve it and I can miss the beauty of the pieces and the whole as I try to make it all fit together.

Maybe I just need to skip the prologues from now on because if I had not read it first, I think I would have enjoyed this book even more.