In Roddy Doyle's "Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha," and again in Frank McCourt's "Angela's Ashes," we are told of life in poverty-ridden back streets of Ireland's cities as seen by young and precocious boys. In each book, the boy's view of the world and his adventures within it share qualities with childhood the world over, despite the appalling conditions in which they live, the abuse that is dealt out within their families and the tragic circumstances that befall them.
If it wasn't for their naivete and their unrelentingly positive outlook on life -- an outlook that could only be formed by a lack of awareness of how life could otherwise be -- we would read these stories and weep. Instead, we weep and laugh at the same time.
"A Boy Called H" has many of the qualities of these books, although its setting is entirely different. The principal difference, of course, is that this is about a boy growing up in Japan. It is set in the 1930s and takes us through the war, Japan's eventual defeat, and the occupation of Japan by U.S. forces. Despite the different circumstances, "H," like Clarke and McCourt, faces the challenges of his life with the optimism characteristic of a child. His reactions to wartime propaganda, the bombing of his home, the transformation of his school into a factory, and the ways in which his life changes because of war, is like Clarke's and McCourt's acceptance of the same grim facts: These are the cards that life has dealt them, and deal with them they will.