This is the extraordinary story of the women captured by the Japanese in 1942 and kept prisoners of war in various camps in Sumatra for over three years. Parts of this story were known to me - who hasn’t heard of Nurse Vivian Bullwinkel and her amazing survival of the Banka Island massacre? If you have seen the film Paradise Road directed by Bruce Beresford, then you will be familiar with the story of how they created an orchestra of voices to help raise morale.

This is a difficult book to read - how these women were treated is truly horrific - so many didn’t make it, due to starvation and disease.

Unfortunately, the book is marred by the dialogue - and there is a lot of dialogue. The author struggles to write realistic dialogue - no one would speak the way it is written in this book in the best of times, let alone under the conditions these women are surviving. It’s way too upbeat and always optimistic, as if the author were writing this for a younger audience and didn’t want to shock them with swearing or negative emotions. I would guarantee that these women swore like the proverbial sailor, and would have often lashed out at each other - it’s only human. But this is never ever conveyed in the book, and it suffers greatly from the lack of realism.

However, it is an amazing story that needs to be know, and for that I am glad that I read this book and learnt about these extraordinary women.