Miss Burma

This is the best read so far this year. It is a family epic which opens a world of culture and lessons of history , which in itself is worth while to pick up this book. But above all it describes delicately the complex ties that bind us, of everyone’s inert search for belonging in this world, which sometimes comes at a great cost. It is also a love story of a family that endures the hardship of wars, ethnic differences and comes out of it broken, but with such aching dignity.

This is a novel that fills in the blanks that the Burmese Government does not want to be known. This is both a love story and a historical novel intertwining the love of a young Karen lady and a Jewish businessman in Burma following WWII. I knew their daughtrer,Lousia Bensen Craig, a key actor in this novel. In real life, she was even more than displayed in the novel. She was a beauty queen who first married a Karen commander and then a former US Naval Officer. She attracted the attention of General Ne Win after appearing in several films. Her first husband was a real-life charismatic warrior who was captured and beheaded by the Burma Army. Louisa assumed command of her husband's battalion and was recognized as both a beautiful woman but also an expert marksman. This novel, by Lousia's daughter, is very close to real history. A great read!

I've always been intrigued by Burma and I so wanted to give this book five stars as Craig does an excellent job of delineating the culture and strife of the country. But a novel must tell a story. While she can create beautiful sentences , the characters and plot get lost in her overwriting. We don't need to know every nuance and facial expression when someone speaks. The book would have been so much more enjoyable if there had been dialog without the flourishes. It's like reading a letter where every word has elaborate curlicues . It gets tiresome. The ending is frustrating to say the least. We've invested a lot of time and energy in the characters and, well, it's just flat. And please don't make the mistake I made Look in the back of the book and find the story of the author's mother, the real Miss Burma. I didn't and it was a missed opportunity to fully understand the characters and their political ideologies. Maybe then I would have been able to award five stars.

All Americans should read this book We know so little about that part of the world and we should learn about it burn army an at is vital

I wish I had read the author' notes before I read the book. During my reading I missed more detailed descriptions of Rangoon and Burma, not realizing this was written by the mother of "Miss Burma". As a story of her life - and her grandparents during these tragic years of Burma's history from before WWII to the 1950's it is a moving narrative and very illuminating about the social and political problems of this country, so rich in history and cultural variety, and so burdened with British and American politics mixing with their own troubles. Really a fascinating glimpse of this time in Burma's history.

I didn't know anything about Burma, other than what I saw and read in the news media. The unspeakable horrors and suffering of the Burmese people have gone on much longer than I realized. Charming Craig did a wonderful job of portraying the relationships, experiences and emotions of the characters. Even though this was a fictionalized account of her family's lives, I wish she had used the actual names of the historical figures because I always love using my Kindle to learn more about historical characters as i read the story.

I have very mixed feelings about this book. I learned a lot about Burma and the author's family is really interesting. The prose is often over written, which can make the book a bit of a slog to get through. There are endless description of every facial expression and thought. The real problem (and the reason for the 3 stars) is that there is no ending. You spend hundreds of pages with these people and then...nothing. It just ends. Not even an epilogue to explain what happened to these people that you've learned so much about and grew to care about. This is my first Amazon review and the reason I decided to add my two cents to the conversation is because of my frustration at the lack of an ending.

An absorbing, well-written novel about a little discussed period of history that is only playing out its last act now, 60 years later, in the former Burma. I didn't know of the Karen people, their story, culture or battles for recognition. While the end drags on a bit with a pondering not found in the rest of the novel, it hardly diminishes this beautiful historical novel that delves its readers into the innermost workings of its characters.

Clearly a mountain of research was done to produce this novel, although the author is fortunate to apparently have first hand accounts of the strife. Clearly the intellectual analysis of these events was approached form a very professional level. Here is the however: it was a lot of work to stay focused and to understand each character, including the dynamics between characters. Hence, this story is more like a non-fiction piece, not really historical fiction. It is admirable that the author is teaching the readers a lot about the strife of a developing Burma, but more of a drama or story would have been more interesting.

I didn't know anything about Burma before I read this novel, other than it is called Myanmar now. The description of its recent history was well done. I am a fan of historical fiction, so when the characters in the novel take on the personalities of real people that existed, the story and history have more meaning. You come away thinking that people and societies are very different, yet very familiar, no matter where they are located on this planet. This novel helped make this planet a little smaller for me.