The Storm We Made: A Novel

“The brief joy of revolt died down, and the neighbors remembered once again that during a war, the only priority was one’s own family. They could not waste their time on the missing children of others.”

Following the disappearance of Abel, the neighborhood of Bintang comes together to search for the missing boy, defying the whims of the Kenpeitai. In this passage, however, their solidarity is short-lived, abandoning their willingness to resist the Japanese occupation in favor of self-preservation.

“They lived in a small house with an orange roof, not at all beautiful but very functional. And yet she was unbearably discontent. Every morning she would stand in the hot kitchen making half-boiled eggs for her husband and children. She would pour black coffee into little tin mugs, a smile on her face, sometimes a song on her lips. But while cooking, singing, and doing all the chores that simulated a quiet, small world of domestic bliss, she would fantasize about cracking the boiling eggs on her husband’s head and throwing hot coffee in the children’s faces. It made her sick with shame.”

Cecily is characterized by her dissatisfaction with British domestic life. This passage summarizes this character trait by explaining her desire to violently upend the peace of her home. Her desire to break from the habits of domesticity does not necessarily mean she wants to commit violence against her family, however, which is why her fantasies fill her with shame.

“From the beginning, Cecily and Fujiwara had talked about a world in which Asians could determine their own future, a world in which one’s status in society did not mean calculating how many points of separation there were between them and a white person.”

Cecily and Fujiwara develop their relationship over a shared desire for national self-determination. As a Japanese citizen, Fujiwara come across as being altruistic to Cecily. She believes that he can sympathize with her treatment as a second-class citizen, even if he isn’t Malayan.

“But here at the camp, his fair skin was a curse. The supervisor assigned to his quadrant, Master Akiro, took a particular loathing to Abel, perhaps because Abel was the closest to his visualization of the white enemy.”

This passage points to the ironic way Abel’s skin color influences his treatment by the Japanese colonizers. The irony stems from the fact that Abel is identified with the Europeans, who look down on Abel and his family as being savages. The Japanese, on the other hand, treat him as the emblem of Western violence, which allows them to take out their aggression on him.

“But kindness did not excuse mass violence, kindness did not bring Abel back, kindness wouldn’t keep her safe. She consoled herself by telling herself she was getting something out of it, the red coupon that helped keep her family alive.”

In this passage, Jujube prevents herself from forming an emotional attachment to Mr. Takahashi by convincing herself that their relationship is transactional. She projects the violence of the entire Japanese occupying force against Mr. Takahashi’s kindness, indicating that the latter does not make up for the former.

“Everyone smiled so little these days. Jujube walked around with her lips squeezed so tightly together that Jasmin wondered if she even remembered how to smile. Jasmin missed her sister, her sister from before—she missed how Jujube would fold her body in half and barrel her head and fingertips into Jasmin’s stomach until Jasmin fell onto the cushions a giggling, ticklish mess. Now all her sister did was hold on to Jasmin’s hand so tightly she left fingernail imprints on Jasmin’s palm.”

Jasmin’s narrative arc is marked by the loss of her innocence. Despite her family’s attempts to protect her from the wickedness of the world around them, the war’s effect on their behavior already signals her entry into a world that is marked by sadness, fear, and despair.

“For them, drinking was something to do to pass the time, something to help injuries hurt a little less. And at first that had been how it was for Abel too. A sip here, a splash there, a way to wash the days away. But then the cravings began—wishing he had something to drink at night before bed, to unsee the horrors of the day and fall asleep.”

In this passage, Abel’s addiction to toddy develops as a way to cope with his traumatic experiences at the labor camp. Though it begins somewhat innocently as a way to take the edge off the hard-working days, Abel comes to realize its ability to repress his memories and make him able to the next day.

“She didn’t know how to lie, but she wasn’t sure how to tell the truth. Jujube would be furious. Lately, everything was so much harder. Every time someone talked, there was always another meaning to the words that she struggled to understand.”

In this passage, Jasmin finds herself making a difficult choice, the outcomes of which remain mostly unclear to her. This develops Jasmin’s arc as a young girl who finds the world around her becoming suddenly and increasingly complex. She cannot resort to simple truths or lies anymore as she must calculate whether it is better to embrace duplicitous language or to face the wrath of her sister.

“The shock of Jujube’s betrayal had made her body feel different—like there was a heavy rock in her chest, like a sheet had been lifted off her eyes and she could see clearly for the first time. This family, the one she had loved all her life, the one she tried to smile for and stay happy for, had tossed her away.”

Jasmin’s defining character trait is her love for her family. Even though she spends most of her days under the floorboards of her house, her family’s attempts to protect her and entertain her allow her to look past the discomfort of her situation. When Jujube punishes Jasmin for sneaking out, she feels that love ebb away, replaced by feelings of hurt and betrayal.

“When hopeful things happened to good people, you were supposed to hold on to the little joy you felt, to grasp it to you, knowing that it may not happen again soon. The pulsing anger that pressed through her body shouldn’t be there.”

Jujube finds herself wrestling with her emotional relationship to Mr. Takahashi in this passage. She knows that, on one hand, the news that Takahashi’s daughter has survived is a miraculous development. While that joy is hard to come by in a time like the last days of the Japanese Occupation of Malaya, her resentment and fear of losing Takahashi’s material support supersedes her ability to share in his happiness.

“Cecily was a woman who liked categorization, who found solace in order. Even the dichotomy that her life had become—housewife and spy—felt like tidy boxes she could open and close as the circumstance warranted.”

This passage describes the double life that Cecily adopts to become Fujiwara’s collaborator. Her ability to compartmentalize these aspects of her life mean that she must try as much as possible to prevent them from crossing over into one another. This motivates her to excel in both areas of her double life, improving as both a housewife and a spy.

“That was the most humiliating thing of all: Fujiwara had changed her, and because he had changed a tiny bit of her into something she was proud of, he had left something of himself in her. He had given her a bigger, brighter version of herself, and once she’d had a taste of this new self, she craved more, so much more.”

What adds to Cecily’s characterization in the previous passage is that her relationship with Fujiwara allows her to transcend her dissatisfaction with British domesticity. In this passage, Fujiwara’s effect on Cecily’s character development is described as a gift that he has given her. She sees Fujiwara as instrumental in bringing her closer to a more idealized version of herself.

“Absolution, Abel realized, could come in all forms. Brother Luke had taught the boys at school that absolution came only from god. But where was god when Akiro broke him from the inside, where was god when Brother Luke sold little boys to save his own skin, where was god now when his options were to murder or await a fate worse than death?”

Abel’s colonial education at the hands of Brother Luke is a significant element of his backstory. Because this passage occurs just before Abel kills Brother Luke, it becomes an indictment of that education. Abel challenges everything that Brother Luke has taught him about the world, especially in light of his abuse at the labor camp, which seems to contradict the existence of a merciful, forgiving God.

“Loving without seeing, she thought, was simply delusion.”

This passage aptly describes Cecily’s relationship to her husband, Gordon. Cecily has always resented Gordon’s careerism. Her collaboration with Fujiwara counteracts Gordon’s work at the public works department. She chooses not to tell him about it, let alone clue him to its existence, even if it affects her temperament because she would rather protect the life she wants to lead as a spy. In this sense, what they share is not love; she allows him instead to succumb to delusion.

“Perhaps this is what growing up was, thought Cecily. To give up one’s ideals in exchange for comforts, to understand that one of these cannot exist in tandem with the other.”

This passage resonates with the compartmentalization of Cecily’s life, particularly in light of Fujiwara’s prolonged absence. Suspecting that their partnership was a one-off engagement, she settles into the comforts of her life as a housewife, realizing the truth that she cannot hope to sustain both at the same time.

“I think she thought she was ugly. But that is because the white people have made us think of beauty as only one thing. But she shone. And she always had so much hope.”

In this passage, Fujiwara shares his observations on Cecily’s self-image. He accurately diagnoses Cecily’s lack of self-esteem as a symptom of colonialism. What colonialism could not breach, however, were the parts of Cecily’s character tied to her idealism. This greatly inspires Fujiwara in turn.

“Jujube wondered about the ways in which girls and women performed for men by always knowing what it was men wanted and how it was they wished to be comforted, always engaged in the ongoing calculus of figuring out what sides of themselves they should show to a man and which parts of their grief were too unbearable for him.”

Chan uses this passage to point to the undertones of paternalism and romance in Jujube’s relationship with Takahashi. Jujube hesitates to oblige Takahashi’s desire to talk about his daughter because she knows she will regret her resentment toward them. She does so anyway because she wants to sustain their relationship, the same way girls and women normally do to gain the approval of men.

“He gave them permission to use him as the butt of their jokes, and that made them respect him. Here is a man, they seemed to think, who looks like one of them but thinks like one of us. Here is a man who allows us to give voice to the things we know we should be ashamed of but don’t want to be ashamed of. Cecily wondered at the damage that would do to one’s soul, to allow others to chip away at you, past the layers of defense, to gain acceptance.”

Fujiwara’s disguise as Bingley Chan weaponizes the racist behavior of the Europeans in Malaya. In this passage, Cecily contemplates on the spiritual cost of taking on this kind of role in public. Fujiwara, in this sense, mirrors her husband, Gordon, who offers himself as an instrument for the advancement of the British agenda as long as it guarantees the advancement of his own career.

“Toddy was easier. It helped him reach inside himself for the simplicity of inaction; it curbed the urge inside of him that always wanted to strive for better. Because the only thing to reach for in the miserable life he’d been given was survival […] Toddy helped him survive.”

As Abel’s addiction to toddy grows stronger, he begins to rationalize that toddy is a survival mechanism. As a response to trauma, addiction can cause people to abandon hope for anything more than survival.

“Isn’t everyone both good and bad?”

After Fujiwara marries Lina, Cecily asks him whether he feels any guilt for deceiving her. Fujiwara tells her to recall how she had responded to his description of the new German leader, Adolf Hitler. In this passage, Cecily reiterates that statement, normalizing not only Fujiwara’s betrayal against Lina, but also her own as well.

“‘That’s love, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘To know badness lives in someone but to love anyway.’”

Lina suggests that love means actively accepting the flaws of a person as a fundamental part of their being. This is a counterpoint to Cecily’s approach to love, which revolves around hiding one’s flaws and putting up an appearance to seem acceptable.

“Grief sucked everything with it, left holes in the body that nothing, not even music, could fill.”

In this passage, Jujube recalls a friend who had lost her mother, filling their house with a silence that she found unbearable. This foreshadows the end of the novel, in which Abel reunites with Cecily and Jujube, but none of them are able to speak about their experiences.

“There was no more need for subterfuge, no more need to exist in the watery place of half-truths between Lina and Fujiwara, no more need to split herself in two anymore. It was time to make a choice. The room sweated, but Cecily knew; she had known the moment she’d walked into this room that reeked of brokenness, she had known the very moment all those years ago, under the white moon, when Fujiwara had told her about the new, brighter world he wanted to build.”

This passage describes the moment that Cecily decides to abandon Yuki. With Lina’s death, Cecily no longer has to put up the appearance of being her friend, extending her care and concern to the daughter of her friend. Cecily reasons that at that moment, the vision of the new world she has envisioned with Fujiwara is much more important than Yuki.