A Message for Nasty (Roderick Fry, Awa Press)

Roderick Fry’s debut novel is the harrowing wartime story of a family fighting to reunite amid the destruction of the Second World War. The plot follows a married couple, Marie and Vincent, who are apart when Japan invades Hong Kong in 1941. When planes begin to fly over Marie’s home on Fortress Hill, Hong Kong, it’s already too late for her and her four children to leave. She spends the next two years struggling to feed her family and keep them safe, all while being surrounded by the horrors and threats of war. Meanwhile, Vincent is trapped in Singapore when he decides to undertake a long and dangerous journey to rescue his family. A Message for Nasty is a fictionalised retelling of Fry’s grandparents’ experiences in WWII. It’s well written, well researched and was clearly a very important, perhaps healing, project for the author. This book fills a huge gap in wartime literature, giving Western readers a glimpse of the little-told stories of Hong Kong at the time. However, although well written, the novel retells events with little emotional detail about the main characters. It’s understandable that Fry could not truly know what his grandparents were thinking and feeling, and he does a good job of filling in those blanks as best he can, but readers may feel they don’t truly get to know his characters. Nonetheless, A Message for Nasty is a hopeful—however heartbreaking—story with a strong heroine. It’s for readers of true stories who want to both fill in gaps in their historical knowledge and understand the world we live in by knowing more about the world we came from.

Danielle Bagnato is a book reviewer and marketing and communications professional.

Category: Reviews