No Quiet Water Paperback – Import, 5 January 2023

I have never read about the incarceration of Japanese-Americans in internment camps before. Though I did see a powerful photo-essay about it in a magazine and was curious about the stories ever since. So when I got the opportunity to read the ARC of this book, I was pretty intrigued. I expected it to be a dark and intense story of the pathetic conditions in the camp telling in gruesome details what the people had to go through.However, the tone of the book, different POVs in chapters as well as the story quickly told me that this book attempted to be more like “The diary of a young girl”. The way the book is written is suitable for YA audience and the story is told through the perspective of Fumio and Flyer. While Fumio is young and has had his life turned upside down, Flyer is a Dog. Yes, unexpected for sure. Those chapters diluted the authenticity the book tried to create since it falls in the historical fiction genre.Fumio who worked with his best friend in his father’s strawberry fields now finds himself in Camp Manzanar, while his Dog Fumio is left on the island with his best friend. There were chapters which I believed were repetitive but then again, it seemed like an attempt to recreate the monotony of camp-life. While the book deals with very strong and dark themes, it does so in a hopeful manner. But what do you expect from a youngster’s POV. Fumio does not understand the complexity of the situation he is in and that is the beauty of it. He seems to get along fine in the camp and that just teaches you a lot about patience. While I think the book could have told a gut-wrenching story with the premise it worked with, I think the narrator chosen to tell the story made it clear that this would be a story of optimism.