On being moved to a new camp we learn ‘ for the first time he felt able to enjoy the war. We’re told ‘although he was hungry all the time, he was happy in the detention centre’. After a series of unsuccessful attempts, he is finally taken prisoner, but this is Jim so his response to the new situation is predictably unusual. For a start, after enjoying his freedom for a while, he decides his new aim is to surrender himself to the Japanese as this seems the most likely way for him to find his, presumably captured, parents. I think he is unique within my war-time set reading because this obsession leads to a highly a-typical response to the trauma of his situation. Jim is English and he is fascinated by the war. He loses his parents (literally loses them, they’re out there somewhere, dead or in a prison camp, and he’s somewhere else) and everyone he meets subsequently treats him with, at best, a faint disgust.

Poor Jim, his book only started to work for me when I realised that I wasn’t alone. His main interests are planes and fighting and I found myself turning into an annoying Victorian anti-heroine when faced with him – desperate to get away quickly and wash my hands with carbolic soap. I think it was, essentially, my utter lack of interest in Jim, the hero. Unfortunately, my disjoined reading of the start was so traumatic I can’t face going back to realise why I struggled so much. I finally feel free and ready to face my other books again. I realised that my half-hearted persistence had paid off and I was actually enjoying it! Empire of the Sun was no longer a guilty duty to be ignored and I was able to cover the middle and end in one go. It took me several months of stop and go attempts to get through the first chapters (the goes were few and far between, the stops were several novels long).

It was there on my Kindle and every time I finished a book mid-commute and desperately needed something new to read I’d try a bit of it, before getting caught up in something I liked more. Despite really trying to follow the regal advice in ‘Alice in Wonderland’ I simply couldn’t ‘ begin at the beginning, and go on until you come to the end: then stop‘. This meant my reading experience of ‘Empire of the Sun’, Ballard’s semi-autobiographical novel about World War II in China, was extremely unusual. I have trouble reading more than one at a time, but get extremely anxious if I don’t have a book constantly on the go. I’m a serial monogamist when it comes to books.

Jg ballard novel of the sun