The Divine Wind: A Love Story

Rating:
Summary: The Divine Whine
Review: The Divine Wind is a beautifully written book, there's no doubt about that. The descriptions and setting is written wonderfully. However, the plot is way too similar to "Snow Falling on Cedars", has rather dull undeveloped characters, love with hardly a mention of the actual falling in love and a selfish and self-absorbed main character (Hartley Penrose) you dislike after a few chapters- who unfortunatly narrates the entire thing. The plot dragged on and on and on. Perhaps Disher would make a better poet.

Rating:
Summary: The Divine Whine
Review: The Divine Wind tells the story of Australia's own Pearl Harbour, namely the bombing of Broome in World War Two. The cast of characters is ripe for a dramatic climax - and Disher, better known for his crime thrillers,underplays it nicely. Take an established Japanese pearling community, who have lived in Australia longer than most regional town residents in the 1930s, Aboriginal stockmen, young men preparing themselves for love or war, young women struggling with tradition, and a town on the doorstep of the war 's south-east Asian front, and mix well. The result is an engaging tale designed for teenage readers and, as often the case, refreshing for adults looking for simplicity and substance.

The story starts methodically enough, portraying the young days of Hartley and his sister Alice, and their friends Mitsy and Jamie. The intensity of their destinies builds like the war itself until the final third of the book which begins: "It was an odd, edgy time. Chance was in the air in late 1941. All the world was breathless, and Broome was wound as tight as a spring."

The tension is palpable on many fronts - sexually, militarily, racially, communally and within Hartley's own family. Indeed, the differences between his seagoing father and Anglo-indoors mother could almost portray a fundamental tension in Australian society between nature and culture. One can read a lot into this simple story because it has these many rich, diverse layers - no wonder it is studied in the formative educational years.

Finally, the "divine wind" arrives, the winds of change, flight, pain, pleasure, heroism, cowardice, vocation and intertwined traditions. My favourite image from this book is the full-moon Festival of the Lanterns, in which Mitsy and her mother Sadako cast forth a model boat loaded with a miniature lantern, flower petals and bundled food, to honour their dead father and husband, Zeke: "And he glided, glided, glided, all the way out through Entrance Point, helped by Mitsy and Sadako, who beat tiny hammers against tiny bells and sang him sweetly to heaven."

Garry Disher has completed a wonderful portrayal of Broome at a pivotal time in the maturing of a nation and its multicultural community.

Rating:
Summary: Australia's Pearl Harbour
Review: The Divine Wind tells the story of Australia's own Pearl Harbour, namely the bombing of Broome in World War Two. The cast of characters is ripe for a dramatic climax - and Disher, better known for his crime thrillers,underplays it nicely. Take an established Japanese pearling community, who have lived in Australia longer than most regional town residents in the 1930s, Aboriginal stockmen, young men preparing themselves for love or war, young women struggling with tradition, and a town on the doorstep of the war 's south-east Asian front, and mix well. The result is an engaging tale designed for teenage readers and, as often the case, refreshing for adults looking for simplicity and substance.

The story starts methodically enough, portraying the young days of Hartley and his sister Alice, and their friends Mitsy and Jamie. The intensity of their destinies builds like the war itself until the final third of the book which begins: "It was an odd, edgy time. Chance was in the air in late 1941. All the world was breathless, and Broome was wound as tight as a spring."

The tension is palpable on many fronts - sexually, militarily, racially, communally and within Hartley's own family. Indeed, the differences between his seagoing father and Anglo-indoors mother could almost portray a fundamental tension in Australian society between nature and culture. One can read a lot into this simple story because it has these many rich, diverse layers - no wonder it is studied in the formative educational years.

Finally, the "divine wind" arrives, the winds of change, flight, pain, pleasure, heroism, cowardice, vocation and intertwined traditions. My favourite image from this book is the full-moon Festival of the Lanterns, in which Mitsy and her mother Sadako cast forth a model boat loaded with a miniature lantern, flower petals and bundled food, to honour their dead father and husband, Zeke: "And he glided, glided, glided, all the way out through Entrance Point, helped by Mitsy and Sadako, who beat tiny hammers against tiny bells and sang him sweetly to heaven."

Garry Disher has completed a wonderful portrayal of Broome at a pivotal time in the maturing of a nation and its multicultural community.

Rating:
Summary: Richie's Picks: THE DIVINE WIND
Review: 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
[...]

Rating:
Summary: The Devine Wind: A love story
Review: The story had great details about the setting and descriced the character beautifully, but it was hard to fallow the plot and who were the characters, i wish there was an ending so we could find out what happens to the characters still living. Other wise--- great book that kept me reading.

Rating:
Summary: The Devine Wind: A love story
Review: What kind of a name is MITSY? And by the way what kind of a name is DISHER? We have been forced to study the Divine Wind in english and we hope this love story (if you can call it that) isn't a re-enactment of Disher's childhood. The characters in this book are undeveloped, the romance is cold and boring, the scene is as well set as a rubics cube. How can this book be compared to Romeo and Juliet? Overall leave romance to the experts.