Tag: World War II

Book Review: The Mitford Affair by Marie Benedict – a novel about an extraordinary set of sisters and the politics that divided them

~ Judith ~ 1 Comment

I’ve been fascinated by the Mitfords ever since I saw a British TV adaptation of Nancy Mitford’s Love in a Cold Climate which aired in the 1980s. Nancy was a witty novelist who moved in literary circles during the 1930s and ’40s, rubbing shoulders with Evelyn Waugh and his ilk. She mined her family and the upper classes for material for her books, which are still very readable today. Nancy had five sisters and one brother, and with eccentric parents, each sibling seemed to be more extraordinary or oddball than the next.

These are the characters that people Marie Benedict’s novel The Mitford Affair, which concentrates on the years 1932 to 1941, with the rise of fascism in Europe and the opening chapters of World War II. Told from the viewpoints of sisters Nancy, Diana and Unity, you couldn’t ask for more varied characters, each with a very distinctive narrative voice. As the years pass, Nancy watches in horror as Diana goes to ever more extremes to promote the politics of her lover Oswald Mosley, and as Unity heads off to Germany to become a kind of Hitler acolyte. As war becomes inevitable, Nancy has to decide if her loyalty lies with family or her country.

As a reader, you feel very much on the side of Nancy, who seems to be the voice of reason among her sisters. She’s also dealing with a lot personally, in particular a problematic marriage and ever more desperate attempts to bear a child. Meanwhile Diana has ditched an adoring, wealthy and titled husband for a man who is already married and the voice of fascism in Britain. She devotes her energies to his cause even when Mosley declares he cannot offer her marriage or any kind of respectability.

Then there’s Unity. Always the least liked in her family – the only daughter to be sent to school so her mother didn’t have to put up with her – you get the feeling that today, Unity would be diagnosed with a mental condition, possibly as bipolar or a spectrum disorder. Much younger than Nancy or Diana, she’s only in her late teens when we meet her, her half of her bedroom festooned with pictures of Hitler and Mussolini, as opposed to Jessica who on her side of the room has etched the hammer and sickle into the window.

After the Olympia Hall rally and the violence of the Blackshirts inflicted at the slightest provocation, undoubtedly on Mosley’s orders, I could no longer even pretend to be in the same political ranks as my sisters. Did we not live in a society where free speech was guaranteed? Could Mosley not bear the slightest critique of BUF and his rule. The strutting, posturing, flag-waving, and shows of bravado I’d chuckled at privately now seem menacing rather than humorous, and I felt an urge to unmask Mosley and his dangerous army as hooligans through my writing. I also began to wonder if I could use my writing as a way to awaken my sisters from this madness.

Unity’s adoration for Hitler is like any ordinary girl’s crush on a matinee idol, but such is her fervour, that she talks her mother into sending her to a finishing school in Munich and staking out a café popular with Hitler himself. She’s a difficult character to be with, but Benedict captures her intensity with sympathy, despite her anti-semitism and support for a cruel totalitarian regime. Hers is the saddest story of the three, and you can’t help feeling that with affection from her family, and some half-decent parenting, Unity could have had a brighter future. But that’s not to be.

This is one of those books that is so much more extraordinary for being based on real events and real people. I found myself often heading to the internet for more background, and it’s all there. The Mitford Affair is an enthralling read, although not an easy one, considering what Diana and Unity were prepared to do for a political cause that would lead to such terrible events in Europe. But I couldn’t help feeling that the writing could have been sharper – there are some rather convoluted sentences, and a few Americanisms slip through now and then. As a study of how political fanaticism can take someone over, though, it does the trick. It’s a three star read from me.

Book Review: The Fine Art of Uncanny Prediction by Robert Goddard – the invisibly detecting Wada returns for a new puzzle in her home country

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

Like Andrew Taylor (see previous post), Robert Goddard is a recipient of the CWA Diamond Dagger Award for his long career in putting out superbly plotted crime fiction. Mostly he’s a writer of stand-alone novels, but his latest book takes us back to Japan where we first met Umiko Wada in The Fine Art of Invisible Detection and a case that brought her to England and a convoluted mystery that helped her cut her teeth as a detective.

In The Fine Art of Uncanny Prediction, Wada has taken over the investigative business set up by her late boss, Kazuto Kodaka. Wada is a middle-aged woman who was widowed young. She’s outwardly unremarkable and, like many fictional private investigators, her work is her life. With a brother in New York, it’s left to Wada to check in on her mother, which is problematic in more ways than one.

The story gets going with a new case, an elderly man who has lost contact with his son. Fumito Nagata is worried his son, Manjiro may be depressed, even suicidal, following the collapse of his business, but Fumito is unable to contact him. Mr Nagata wants Wada to find him and report back. The younger Nagata is also the nephew of Teruki Jinno, head of a prosperous construction business that has been in the family for decades, a business that did well out of rebuilding Tokyo after the war.

Wada’s investigation will take us back to those dark days after Tokyo was firebombed, into a labyrinthine plot full of strands but all focused on power and money. She’s also being pestered by her brother to see to what’s going on with their mother – she’s taken on a lodger, an ex-Sumo wrestler who has fallen from grace. Wada’s brother is appalled.

‘I have you down as a solitary person. Is that right?’
‘It is not wrong.’
He frowned at her. ‘Do you ever let your guard down, Wada?’
‘Occasionally.’
‘Am I likely to see it happen?’
‘Unlikely, I would say.’
Then he grinned. ‘See, that’s what I like about you. You’re just so damn honest.’

The story also slips back in time to the mid 1990s and a case being investigated by Kodaka, again involving the Jinno construction company. Kodaka is asked to determine the recipient of large sums of money, paid into a bank account by the late founder of the company for over fifty years. The case will also have Kodaka asking questions around the Kobe Sensitive, the mysterious woman who phoned in a prediction about the Kobe earthquake – a prediction that was ignored but proved to be tragically accurate.

The plot flips between the two time periods, and the cases of the two detectives that will, of course, show how they connect towards the end. There’s a lot going on and a raft of characters to remember – I made frequent use of the character list at the start of the book. But I persevered, because Goddard is such a brilliant storyteller, there’s a thread of humour running through it all and Wada is such an interesting character – one of those ordinary people flung into extraordinary circumstances and somehow coping surprisingly well.

Yes, there’s plenty of danger, and Wada can’t ever be sure who to trust. There’s her connection to Kodaka, a more typical fictional detective who drinks too much, but knows his stuff, and has a will to stand up for the underdog. I enjoyed how the story includes how the two met, and how Wada became involved in the tricky business of detecting, much to her mother’s disappointment.

The setting of Tokyo seems very real – we get the trains, the distinctive suburbs and Tokyo’s hinterland. There’s a visit to San Francisco too – both settings come to life on the page. Underneath what turns out to be a ripping good yarn, full of twists, are thoughts on the devastation and ongoing effects of war, and those who prosper from it. The possibility of predicting earthquakes – both scientifically and through a kind of ‘gift’ is a fairly original concept for a detective novel and adds a good deal of interest.

There are still plenty of surprises as it as it all comes together towards the end, and as a reader I felt I was in the hands of a seasoned professional, an author that makes it all work so cleverly, creating a supremely satisfying read. Not that I was surprised. He’s done it so often before. The Fine Art of Uncanny Prediction is a four and a half star read from me.

Book Review: The War Pianist by Mandy Robotham – wartime danger across the airwaves

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

This is one of those wartime novels featuring a heroine who is just an ordinary girl toughing it out against Hitler. She probably never wanted to get involved in the Resistance or working as a spy for SOE, but something has triggered her desire to get involved. There will be a couple of military aircraft from the era on the front cover, discretely in a corner so you know it’s a war story. A ton of books like this have been written lately, and they can be a fun read, but how do you tell which are the good ones?

I’d really enjoyed the audiobook version of The Resistance Girl by Mandy Robotham, which took me to the war in Norway. It had engaging characters, a really nasty malefactor, a bit of romance, plenty of suspenseful dodging of the enemy, and the promise of a happy ending. But I learned a lot about the war in Norway and how it affected people, the heroic ways they fought back. The story didn’t shy away from some of the horrific events of the war but describes them off-stage so nothing’s ever too harrowing for the reader.

And it’s much the same here with The War Pianist. Marnie works at the BBC in London helping to prepare radio scripts for airing. Her parents have decamped to Scotland and apart from cousin Susie who is wondering about leaving London too, her only family is Gilbert, her adored grandfather, still running his tailoring business near Trafalgar Square. But after a bombing raid by the Luftwaffe, Marnie is horrified to discover the shop has been levelled and her grandfather is dead.

Reeling with grief, Marnie goes back to the shop one day in search of a memento of her beloved relative only to find hidden away in a basement cupboard, a radio set for transmitting. Gilbert was a man with a secret, and Marnie worries that he might have been a spy. As she carries the radio away with her she is brought to a halt by an ARP warden who turns out to be someone else keeping a secret. Willem is a Dutch Resistance fighter in London to help shore up support from Britain on the behest of Queen Wilhelmina.

Willem persuades Marnie to take over from Gilbert, sending coded messages to Corrie, Willem’s fellow Resistance fighter in Amsterdam. Marnie knows all about radios from her work at the BBC, and she and her grandfather used to play games in Morse Code when she was young. So Marnie, fired up with rage against Hitler because of the Blitz and her grief, is the perfect recruit to step into Gilbert’s shoes. But she has to be careful, as there are reports of fifth columnists supporting the enemy at large, who are watching and listening. Who can she trust?

When the inevitable sirens stir the BBC’s populace into the basement that evening, something in her – she doesn’t know what – is drawn in the opposite direction, up onto the roof of Broadcasting House. Climbing out into a sky already glowing orange and a wind warmed by fiery destruction, she stands aghast. It’s as if Hitler has taken a match to a box of fireworks and simply sprinkled the contents across London – the red tracer fire of ack-ack guns meeting mandarin sparks from a fresh explosion, tiny pockets of green-blue glow like fireflies amid the rubble as the gas mains are hit below. A rainbow of destruction that’s both vivid and grotesque.

The story weaves Marnie’s story in with Corrie’s in Amsterdam, where things are a lot more desperate under the Nazi Occupation. It’s only 1940 and the resistance is in its early stages while reprisals and food shortages are the order of the day. There are reports of devastation in other cities like Rotterdam and fear is widespread. But Corrie continues with her radio, messages kept as brief as possible to avoid her site of transmission being pinpointed by the enemy.

The story takes Marnie across to Amsterdam where the plot ramps up a lot. Here the evil Nazi officer, Lothar Selig, is keen to make his mark – he also turns up in The Resistance Girl – when one of the Willem’s team disappears. There’s an emotional connection, so this gives the story a bit more punch. Marnie is also torn emotionally, but will do anything to help and her radio skills become crucial. The story builds to a taut ending and it’s a satisfying read, without ever being too grim centre stage.

I confess I didn’t enjoy this quite as much as The Resistance Girl, although it’s still a pacy read and interesting for the most part. The romantic element seemed a bit forced, maybe because the character of Willem is not particularly well developed. I might give Robotham another go, or if I’m in the mood for a good wartime story, I’ll head back to Pam Jenoff or Kate Quinn, who are pretty solid in this genre. The War Pianist gets three out of four stars from me.

Book Review: Mr Churchill’s Secretary by Susan Elia MacNeal – a light but lively WWII mystery

~ Judith ~ 1 Comment

This novel is the first in a wartime mystery series that features American-raised Maggie Hope, a young woman with a formidable brain. Which is how it should be. I like a brainy female sleuth. You know she’s going to have to figure things out rather than stumble around, picking up clues by accident.

Maggie has moved to London not so long ago. She was supposed to sell her grandmother’s house and then settle back into her studies in mathematics, taking up her place at an American university. She graduated top of her class and academic expectations are high. But along comes a war, World War II, that is, and Maggie wants to do her bit. She loves London and decides to apply for an under secretary position in the prime minister’s office. She doesn’t get it, of course. She’s a girl and they only take men, but when her friend, David suggests she try for a job as the PM’s secretary, she reluctantly gives it a go.

Maggie is desperate to use her maths brain, but at Number 10, she’s thrown by Churchill’s odd habits and cryptic commands, while being urged to keep her head down and do what she’s told by her superiors. Fortunately she has a cheery group of friends to hang out with, including her flatmates: Paige, an old classmate from America’s Deep South and hearty, Irish Chuck plus a pair of scatty twin sisters. David, is always dropping by. His life has always been a little risky as he’s gay when you weren’t really allowed to be so what’s a little war in the general scheme of things? He keeps everyone’s spirits up but his best friend John is moody and somewhat awkward around Maggie.

The story switches to that of Claire who is visiting the Saturday Club, a group of Nazi sympathisers, and Michael, who is letting off bombs around the place for Ireland. While the narrative builds towards a plot agains the PM, Maggie has questions about her parentage. There’s something her guardian, Aunt Emily, is not telling her. When she goes to find her parents’ graves, her mother is there for all to see, but her father’s grave is missing.

Things get more complicated with codes appearing in mysterious places and a visit to Bletchley Park, while pretty much everyone among the cast of characters is in danger from something. Whether it’s the bombs raining down on London, or Nazi sympathisers determined not to have their plans foiled, Maggie’s life has just got a lot more perilous. Things go down to the wire for Maggie, the PM and an iconic building in London, but luckily there’s Maggie’s amazing brain to save the day.

Anyone imagining this series to be ideal for fans of Jacqueline Winspear’s Maisie Dobbs, might want to reconsider. I think they are quite different beasts. The Winspear books reveal a lot about the war, and recent history, often taking a little understood aspect and making it the basis of a story. Her characters are really put through the ringer and there’s a strong emotional charge.

The Maggie Hope books would seem to be a more imaginative bunch of stories and are quite a lot lighter in tone. There’s lots of dancing in nightclubs, romance and general socialising, more about the music of the time, what people were wearing which adds colour and sets the scene. I shall probably continue with the series, but my reasons for picking up a Maggie Hope book will be for a lighter kind of entertainment. Mr Churchill’s Secretary gets three stars from me.

Book Review: The Whalebone Theatre by Joanna Quinn – an English country house, a quirky heroine and a looming war

~ Judith ~ 2 Comments

There’s something about novels set in English manor houses – the setting is almost a character in itself. In Joanna Quinn’s debut novel we have Chilcombe, the home of the Seagraves, a house that has seen better days, but still mired in the old traditions of class. Jasper Seagrave is so desperate to pass on his estate to a son, that he marries young Rosalind, who in the period following World War I has little choice in suitors. Jasper is in his forties, short and stout, with a wild young daughter, Cristabel.

We meet Cristabel, age four, scruffy and dirty, and brandishing a stick as the carriage pulls up with her new step-mother. She’s a fierce little girl who grows into a fierce young woman, as her family shifts and changes around her, bringing a new sister – Flossie, known, at first, as the Veg; and eventually a longed-for male heir, the much adored Digby. By now Chilcombe is home to an Uncle Willoughby and the scene of endless parties.

War hero Willoughby brings a string of hangers on, some of them surprisingly useful and all of them interesting characters. But it’s the three children, particularly Cristabel who are the stars of the story. Left to their own devices, the children run wild, with little parental input. Digby is the only one who goes to school, the girls partially educated by a series of French governesses. The family get introduced to a bohemian set who appear on the beach one summer – the loud and charismatic Russian painter, Taras, with his wife and two lithe models, plus a family of wild, dark-haired children.

Taras and his family have a lasting effect on the younger Seagraves. While this is largely Cristabel’s story – her desperate attempts to be her own person in a world full of constraints, I enjoyed Digby’s story and particularly Flossie’s. While the other two sign up to do their bit against Hitler, Flossie is more passive, but eventually finds out what she’s good at and what she wants from life. You really have to feel sorry for young girls with no chance at a decent education.

‘Has it occurred to you that Cristabel might be less of a galumpher if she visited London more often?’ said Perry. ‘Has she ever been there? Has she ever been anywhere? Astonishingly, it won’t be that long before she’ll be a debutante. She needs to learn how to behave. Nobody minds a spirited girl from the shires. A practical sort. But they will mind if she won’t use a fork.’

‘Surely she uses a fork.’

Willoughby laughed. ‘I’m afraid not, my dear. She’s taken to eating off her hunting knife. Like a pirate. I rather enjoy it.’

This is a kind of coming of age novel, with its three characters discovering what it is to be themselves in a world set to change. Life after the war will bare little resemblance for how it was before – particularly in the grand country houses.

Joanna Quinn describes a changing society, an England devastated by the first war, the fast set drowning its sorrows in champagne, while a younger generation is ready to break the rules and find their own paths in life. The war welcomes the skills of the three siblings, but how will any of them find fulfilment when the war is over?

I adored The Whalebone Theatre. The writing is fresh, the characters are wonderful and the plot has plenty of surprises and turns. And Quinn does her settings really well – the house on the Dorset coast; Paris under German occupation. There’s a lot to enjoy and I look forward to what Quinn comes up with next. This book gets four stars out of five from me.

Book Review: Return to Valetto by Dominic Smith – back to Italy with a gorgeous evocation of place and atmosphere

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

Well, yes I know this book is about a lot more than its setting. There’s a man’s lingering grief for his late wife. A family of elderly women and a secret they never got to grips with from World War II. There’s some parent-child dynamics and a potential love affair. And all of it comes together in a captivating story that maybe takes a little while to get going, but once you get in, has you nicely hooked.

But when I look back on this book in months and maybe even years to come, I know it will be the setting that I’ll think about first. Valetto is Dominic Smith’s invented town in Umbria, which sits on a pedestal of volcanic rock. Much of the old town has fallen down into surrounding valleys, a 1971 earthquake urging many of its inhabitants to relocate. It has become a kind turreted and terracotta island, connected to the surrounding landscape by a footbridge.

Hugh is an American historian who specialises in the study of abandoned towns – there’s hundreds of them dotted around Italy and what better place to begin than Valetto, the childhood home of his mother and where even today his grandmother and three aunts still live. The Serafino women, all widows, are a big chunk of the population which has dwindled to just 10. In a few weeks it is to be his grandmother’s 100th birthday and a party has been planned.

A spanner in the works is the woman who has taken possession of Hugh’s cottage on the Serafino property, supposedly given to her mother for services rendered when Hugh’s grandfather, Aldo, was a resistance fighter during the war. Elissa Tomassi is adamant that the cottage is legally hers, just as Hugh’s aunts are convinced she’s a squatter with no legal tenure. Hugh is sure there can be a way to keep everyone happy and is caught in the middle. But he has to get to the bottom of what happened during the war and discovers not one but two family mysteries to solve.

The past will take Hugh back to Elissa’s home town in the north of Italy to find out what Aldo did in the closing years of the war. He’ll also discover a link between his mother and the Elissa’s that is a trickier memory to unlock and will reveal a crime that has been swept under the carpet. The story builds to a powerful and moving conclusion that has you glued to the final chapters as past deeds are dealt with.

What could be done with the wreckage of the past? As a historian I’d always believed that studying the past could reveal hidden meanings and patterns, that motifs lurked in the underbrush, but now I saw the neap tide of history washing up flotsam on an empty beach.

I enjoyed Return to Valetto enormously, not only for the setting which seems to be a big part of every scene. The late autumn mist across the valley that comes and goes and adds even more mystery. The large old villa that is the Serafino home with its cavernous rooms and crumbling frescoes. There’s the old family restaurant established by his grandmother, where you can see abandoned place settings and dusty menus from a night in 1971. (Oh, did I forget to mention this books is also a hymn to Italian regional cuisine?)

And the characters are a joy. The three aunts, each with their own peculiar ways and at times difficult interactions with each other. I have a particular fondness for books about aunts, going back to P G Wodehouse’s Bertie Wooster stories, and here Iris, Rose and Violet are brilliant. The grandmother with her iron determination to host an unforgettable birthday celebration with an ever-growing guest list and a despairing cook. Both Hugh and Elissa have daughters that make an appearance, so it’s an inter-generational tale as well.

I can’t help feeling Dominic Smith had a wonderful time researching and writing this book as his love for history, particularly social history, as well as all things Italian shines through. This is the second novel by this author I have read and recall that Bright and Distant Shores was one of my top reads for the year it came out. I’ve heard lots of good things about The Last Painting of Sarah de Vos as well. Return to Valetto gets the full five stars from me.

By the way, the fictional town of Valetto is inspired by Civita di Bagnoregio in Lazio – in case you want to visit, either in person or via the Internet.

Reading the Classics: Olivia Manning’s The Balkan Trilogy Part 1 – The Great Fortune

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

This round of the Classics Club Spin sent me off to Romania, 1939, for the first of six books that are based on Manning’s own experiences, and which are combined together as her Fortunes of War series. I have only read the first book: The Great Fortune , which is a decent, meaty read for a number of reasons.

The story begins with a train journey. Newley weds, Guy and Harriet Pringle are on their way to Bucharest in Romania. Guy teaches English at a Bucharest university as part of a cultural programme sponsored by the British government. He’s met Harriet during the summer vacation and married her before bringing her to the Balkans just as Germany invades Poland.

So when the Pringles arrive at their hotel, Harriet is confronted not only by persistent beggars, many of them deformed from birth to help their earning potential, but also an influx of Polish refugees. Harriet and Guy are temporarily staying here until they can find a flat, because Guy has always tended to couch surf among his wide and varied set of acquaintances. He’s a popular young man who thrives on interacting with others, talking literature and politics into the small hours.

Guy’s also a devotee of Marxism which he sees as a potential solution in a country where the peasants are struggling under a powerful elite. Romania has a strong economy with plentiful resources, among them a highly productive agricultural sector. But with a war starting up, much of this produce is exported and the ensuing hike in the cost of living puts a terrible strain on the poorest. Meanwhile the Pringles hob-nob with assorted academics and civil servants at various plush restaurants.

As Harriet passed between the tables with Clarence, there was a little murmur of comment: first that she should make this public appearance with someone other than her husband, then the common complaint that English teachers – they were all regarded as ‘teachers’ – could afford to come to a restaurant of this class. In Rumania a teacher was one of the lowest-paid members of the lower-middle class, earning perhaps four thousand lei a month. Here was proof that the English teachers were not teachers at all but, as everyone suspected, spies.

We get another view of Bucharest society through the eyes of Prince Yakimov, also newly arrived, who has fallen on hard times. It isn’t clear quite how he comes to be in Bucharest, except that he needs to make his remittance last a bit longer and the city seems cheap. He hasn’t a clue how to earn a living. Yakimov is technically British, his father having escaped Russia at the time of revolution, but now drifts from hotel to hotel living on credit. His finely tailored clothes, his name and good manners soon have him invited to parties given by the aristocracy, in the hope they can fleece him at cards.

But mostly this is Harriet’s story. The poor girl has to get used to sharing Guy, not only with his many friends, but also with Sophie, who’d hoped to marry Guy herself, and therefore acquire a British passport. Other characters include gloomy Clarence, Guy’s colleague, who soon takes an interest in Harriet, and Guy’s boss, Inchcape, who has been put in charge of British propaganda for the Balkans. The story bubbles along full of lively conversations on the political situation, the locals as well as relationships and anything else – often very lifelike and stimulating dialogue.

Olivia Manning has masterfully recreated a time and place in a way that seems very vivid – she was similarly married to a British academic at a Bucharest university, and this shows in her descriptions of the people of the city, its buildings and parks, its cafés and restaurants. You really feel you are there with Harriet and you suffer with her all the anxiety of fitting in and waiting for Guy to come home. All the while, events are taking a turn for the worse with the outbreak of war. She worries she will never be able to return to England, that Hitler will invade Britain, that Hitler will invade Romania.

Running through the book is a wonderful cast of characters, and a smattering of dry humour. Harriet is one of those quiet observers who doesn’t suffer fools gladly, but is often stuck with odd company and not much to do. Scenes with Yakimov offer a mix of hilarity and desperation. The story is set over four parts but comes together nicely towards a strong conclusion, with Guy deciding to produce a Shakespeare play. This brings out the best and worst in the members of the cast, all taken from his friends and colleagues.

I really enjoyed The Great Fortune, although it wasn’t a book to rush through, requiring lots of concentration to keep up with who was who. But I still hope to read more in the series, including Manning’s follow-up books that make up The Levant Trilogy which describes the Pringles’ life in Egypt as the war rages on. Manning also wrote a number of stand-alone novels that could also be well worth checking out – she’s a terrific writer. The Good Fortune gets four stars from me.

Book Review: Mother’s Boy by Patrick Gale – an imagined life of Cornwall’s favourite poet

~ Judith ~ 5 Comments

I’ve read a ton of novels by Patrick Gale – I love his writing for its warmth, perception and the characters. They’re always shown with all their flaws, and yet they make for oddly likeable company. Gale reveals what makes them them interesting and ordinary at the same time.

Like Charles Causley, Cornwall’s favourite poet – the subject of the latest Gale book, Mother’s Boy. The story takes us back to the early part of the twentieth century, and the courtship of Causley’s parents, both of them working in service: Laura as a maid in a small household and Charlie who drives a pony and trap for a local doctor. They marry while World War I is getting up steam and see little of each other for years. Charles is born in 1917, his father shipped home eventually, but with TB.

The story clips along through the years, with chapters about Charles’s early life as a boy in Launceston while his father is still alive, school life and his knack for language, a talent for the piano and his discovery of poetry. There are two unlikely friendships, the butcher’s boy who once bullied him and Ginger, the annoying boy who followed him around and listened outside as Charles practised on the piano. His mother’s thrill to find Charles a safe job at a desk; Charles’s disappointment that he won’t be continuing his education.

Then another war, and Charles’s acceptance into the navy as a coder. There are several chapters that progress the war, and Charles’s romantic connection with two men. Each chapter shows a new discovery or aspect of the war through key events or changes to Charles’s life, the novel finishing a few years after the war.

Parallel to Charles’s story is Laura’s, working away at her little laundry business, her days ruled by the weather and the rigid timetable required to get it all done. Her love for Charles is a constant. Fortunately for Laura, the ache of missing Charles while he is away at war is tempered by the evacuees she takes on, the Americans setting up bases around the town and later the prisoners of war who inhabit one base once the soldiers have headed across to France.. So we get an interesting glimpse of the war at home.

And while she suffered, Charles was either out at his play-reading group or rehearsing with his dance band or drinking beer with friends, or else he was shut in his room, stabbing away at his typewriter or listening intently to the radio, as often not to some programme about the international situation and politics, which made her head spin if she tried to follow it, and telling her to knit more quietly.

The two main characters are so nicely drawn, so empathetic, that you feel you know them well. Charles is refined and educated, a lover of good theatre and literature, his working class mother often bemused by the things he says. The story ambles along through the years with sudden events that make you really feel for mother and son; some happy moments but also the tragedies that you’d expect because of the war.

You get a strong sense of what it was like to be born different, both artistic as well as gay in a time and place when such things were problematic; and yet Charles manages to be true to himself in a way that works for him. But at what cost? The story pulls you along, each chapter adding something new on both an intimate scale as well as within the wider world. I thought I’d close the book and think, yes that was an interesting read and very true to its subject matter. And then wham! The final scene, in its quiet living room setting, quite blew me away. There was a lump in my throat. There were tears.

Patrick Gale’s novels often have a way of creeping up behind you, leaving you a little stunned, but in a nice way. His author’s notes reveal that Causely was often asked why he hadn’t written a full memoir, not just the few autobiographical fragments that remained after his death in 2003. Causley’s reply was that it was all there in the poems. The poem Angel Hill, quoted in full at the end of the book, could be a case in point and ties in beautifully with Gale’s novel, particularly that final scene.

Mother’s Boy is a stand-out novel by an accomplished writer whose work never disappoints. If you like this book, it is worth checking out the author’s notes on his website wihich add detail and some interesting photos. You can tell that Charles Causley has become close to his heart, and Laura too. I love books where you feel the author has poured his heart into a story. I feel this is the case here and why it gets a five out of five from me.

Book Review: The Resistance Girl by Mandy Robotham – a gripping read about a less-documented corner of the war

~ Judith ~ 1 Comment

I’ve read a few novels about World War Two – heart-breaking stories for the most part about those who served, POWs and Concentration Camps, Intelligence Officers sent behind enemy lines and so on. But they’ve mostly been about the main players: France, Britain and Germany. I knew next to nothing about how the war affected Norway and this book was quite an eye-opener.

The resistance girl of the title is Rumi Orlstad. We meet her at a Bergen dockside railing at the war which has taken her fiancé. Magnus was lost at sea during his first voyage with the Shetland bus. I’d come across the bus in other books – the fleet of 30 odd fishing boats that ferried secret service agents and refugees between Sheltand and Norway – since 1940 under German occupation. The bus supported the Norwegian resistance, bringing supplies and instructors as well as assisting with sabotage.

Rumi’s father and step-brother help with the bus, and Rumi, motherless and alone, helps with the fishing business. It’s November, so there’s snow when she’s sent to bring two new British officers to a safe-house, both having parachuted into nearby countryside. She’s cross when she has to cut down Jens Parkes from the tree that’s caught his parachute, but luckily he can ski. Still reeling from her loss, they form an uneasy alliance. At least being half Norwegian, Jens looks the part and can blend in, hiding his radio transmitter among the clothing he collects for refugees – his cover.

While Jens gets on with supporting the cause, Rumi discovers her best friend has been sent to Lebensborn, one of many maternity camps devised by Himmler to produce an ideal Aryan race. It was felt that Norwegians – tall, blond and fair – had all the right attributes and so German officers stationed in Norway were encouraged to engage with young Norwegian women – a few married them and whisked them off to Germany. But many of these girls were just taken advantage off, like Rumi’s friend Anya, their babies planned for childless German couples.

This is where I found the book particularly interesting. Part of the narration is from the point of view of a housekeeper so it’s a bit like a fly-on-the-wall account. The housekeeper worked for the family that owned the house before the Germans requisitioned it – like so many larger properties – and she has no idea about what it’s to be used for. Little by little her fears grow as it all begins to make sense. The dormitories and the cots, the German midwives, the guards, the frightened young women.

How Rumi tries to help her friend forms a large part of the book, as well as her interactions with Jens and his dangerous missions. There are some excellent supporting characters too. The sinister Lothar Sellig – a German officer for the Abwehr – who keeps turning up like a bad penny, on his quest to clamp down on the resistance; Rumi’s neighbour Marjit who is like a mother figure to Rumi and having been a nurse during WWI is almost as determined and fearless as Rumi. She has a surprising connection with Jens.

Mandy Robotham has done plenty of research to bring the city of Bergen to life, its cafés and fishing industry, as well as the domestic settings, the traditional knitting and Norwegian meals. The horrors of what Norway endured under enemy occupation are described too: the fear of living alongside the enemy, the reprisals against insurrection. Himmler’s Lebensborn project seems particularly sinister, giving the novel some heft and the story builds towards a tense and exciting ending.

The Resistance Girl is a terrific story and would appeal to readers who have enjoyed Kate Quinn’s wartime novels. I enjoyed this book as an e-audiobook and the reader – Antonia Beamish – made the characters come alive and handled the Norwegian names like a native. Or so it seemed to me. I’ll be hunting out more by Mandy Robotham – this novel gets a four out of five from me.

Book Review: The Narrow Land by Christine Dwyer Hickey – an atmospheric historical drama and the perfect ‘quiet’ read

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

I recently came upon a post on Twitter asking readers to name their favourite ‘quiet’ books.. Among the recommendations were lots of my favourites and quite a few more I’d not heard of. Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead was there, and Barbara Pym, as well as Anne Tyler and Elizabeth von Arnim’s Enchanted April. And I thought, yes these are the authors that I read again and again. Now I can add The Narrow Land to the list – a book about the small dramas of people thrown together on Cape Cod during the summer of 1950.

Among the cast of characters is Ed Hopper. He’s the much-loved American painter who produced similarly quiet pictures of people and cars and architecture, the most famous of which is probably Nighthawks, showing late-night customers at a city diner. Ed and his wife Jo live in New York with a holiday house at Cape Cod. They make an odd couple, he’s very tall, quiet, solemn even, while she’s short, emotional and talkative. When we meet them they are in their sixties. Ed has the artist’s version of writer’s block; Jo anxiously quizzing him about possible subject matter, while regretting the sacrifice of her own artistic ambitions to further Ed’s career.

We also meet Michael, the ten-year-old German orphan adopted by a kindly New York couple after their own son’s death. He is sent for two weeks’ holiday with the Kaplans, a well-to-do family who support the charity that has rescued orphans like Michael. Mrs Kaplan is a Lady Bountiful type of character who is renting a large house on the cape with her daughter, Katherine, who is ill, and her glamorous daughter-in-law, the widow of Mrs K’s only son. As well as enjoying the benefits of a holiday by the sea, Michael will be company for Mrs K’s grandson, Richie.

Michael has plenty of demons – memories of the horrors of his war, the loss of his nationality, his language, but also the fear that his new parents won’t want him back – they are moving house and expecting another child. Then there’s fitting in with the tony Kaplans, knowing what to say and do. Richie, soon to be despatched to a new boarding school is chatty and excessively well-mannered, but also suffering the loss of his father.

When Jo tries to shoo the Kaplan’s from the beach in front of the Hoppers’ house, what begins as a seemingly awful social gaffe becomes the catalyst that throws the two households together. Everyone’s intrigued to meet Ed, who cringes at the thought of social engagements. But it’s the two lost and lonely boys who seem to connect with the artist and his wife. While Jo tries to make up with the Kaplans for her earlier bad manners, Ed roams around looking at buildings, their windows and doorways, sketching, walking and thinking. There’s a woman too whose image he can’t quite shake and feels he’s seen her somewhere around here before.

The Narrow Land is a slow burn of a read, with chapters named after some of the planets in Holst’s famous suite, a record loved by both Ed and Katherine. Stars are aligning, perhaps. Little by little, we get to know the characters and they are all written with immense sympathy though each have their faults. Against this, the wider story of the middle twentieth century and an America rebuilding after the war, while a new war in Korea is on the horizon. The characters are also battling it out – Ed and Jo bicker and walk out on each other, Michael and Richie don’t get along either. Only Katherine can soothe the troubled waters it seems, but she’s got her own battle on her hands.

In the background you have the Cape Cod summer, the wind riffling through the long grass, the boats on the water, the long, languid evenings. Did I mention this is also the perfect winter read? I particularly enjoyed the insight you get into Ed Hopper’s paintings, his artist’s eye, his struggles to find the right subject matter. Visual images, music and lingering scents of cigarettes and cologne add to the immediacy of the book, often seen through Michael’s point of view, the perfect impressionable young narrator.

The Narrow Land is an accomplished and spell-binding drama, easily a five out of five from me. It’s also the 2020 recipient of the Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction, and as such qualifies for one of the challenges in our library’s Turn Up the Heat winter reading programme: Read a Prize Winning Book. Put this ‘quiet’ novel on your to-read list.