THE TOKYO EXPRESS

My friends Thomas Magill (BBC Radio Journalist) and publisher and author Audrey Snee

 

Lovely to talk to both Thomas and Audrey about current projects. They are both in the limelight:  Thomas with his BBC interviewing programmes and Audrey so busy with, not only her own writing, publishing the work of others (Estuary Publishing), but with SWAN - the Southend Writers and Artists Network. I am so impressed with the quality and inspirational work of these creative people living around Southend, Essex. 

 

Audrey has written yet another novel, this time Tokyo Express, a title that seemed somehow familiar, yet it is set in modern times to a background of a disastrous tsunami.  

From the initial pages in which we learn about the Irish protagonist, Conor, then living in Tokyo  with his young wife Mimi, I absorbed information about the similarity of Irish and Japanese cultures. Japan and Ireland are both island nations with strong attachments to their individual traditions.  Audrey knows her stuff well, as she lived in Japan for several years and is from an Irish family.  Her story-line is fascinating and believable, particularly regarding the aftermath of the tsunami in which we assume Mimi died with thousands of others. This gripping tale also takes the reader back sixty years to Tokyo in 1945 when the city was almost obliterated in just a couple of nights by the bombing by the Allies.

A clever, powerful read! 

Una Rose, Estuary Publishing www.estuarypublishing.co.uk. £9.99 ISBN 978-0-9570635-2-5