Tag Archives: WW2

#BookReview ‘The Sicilian Secret’ by Angela Petch #WW2 #romance

4 Replies

Angela Petch knows how to tell a good World War Two romance. Her latest The Sicilian Secret blends a wartime romance with a 1973 mystery about parentage. There are lots of surprises along the way and a fascinating portrayal of Sicily during the Allied invasion of 1943. Angela Petch When Paige Caister’s beloved Aunt Florence dies suddenly, she inherits not only Squirrels cottage in Suffolk where Paige grew up with Flo, but also a box of mementoes. There is a necklace, a note to Paige which is unfinished and promising to ‘tell you everything,’ and an old airmail letter addressed to someone called Joy. This box sets Paige off on a journey of discovery, away from the life she thought she wanted.
The two major locations in this novel – rural Suffolk, and the south-eastern corner of Sicily – are vividly drawn. Mourning her aunt, Paige is thankful for the love of the Suffolk countryside, the trees and foxes, the kingfishers, that Flo gave her. As Paige follows the at first incomprehensible clues, she finds herself heading for Sicily seeking answers to questions she doesn’t really know.
In 1927 we meet a young Italian-British man, born in London to parents who recently emigrated from Sicily. Savio, called a ‘dirty Tally’ by schoolmates, wonders what it would be like to be a proper Italian, born in Sicily. When war breaks out, Savio and his parents are interned as ‘enemy aliens’ on the Isle of Man. Telling everyone that he was born in London and is English, Savio is ignored. He responds with his fists and is punished. His luck changes when a sympathetic British officer recognises his courage, resilience and determination.
In 1943, Lady Joy Harrison, leaves her over-bearing mother to take up an offer with a secret Government organisation. Tall and not ‘a girl’s girl,’ Joy’s fluent Italian leads her to a tough outdoor base in Scotland where she meets a young Italian determined to prove himself. What happens next is a time-old story of love in wartime; intense, real, fleeting, full of love and despair. Two characters, bonded by their difficulty in fitting in with society’s expectations, must decide whether to risk being true to themselves.
This is dual-timeline novel told from four perspectives; Joy, Savio, Paige and Florence. The story moves slowly at first as the author builds the picture, but the pace picks up as Paige’s investigation takes her to Italy. The ending is rather abrupt and the mystery perhaps predictable, but the journey of the wartime characters is engaging. The need to find out what happened to Joy and Savio made me read the book quickly over a weekend. This is a book to sink into and lose yourself in.

Here are my reviews of other novels also by Angela Petch:-
THE GIRL WHO ESCAPED
THE LOST GARDEN
THE POSTCARD FROM ITALY
THE TUSCAN SECRET

If you like this, try:-
‘The Collaborator’s Daughter’ by Eva Glyn
‘The Secret Shore’ by Liz Fenwick
‘Love in a Time of War’ by Adrienne Chinn #1FRYSISTERS

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE SICILIAN SECRET by Angela Petch https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-89Y via @SandraDanby

COMING SOON… THE NEXT BOOK I REVIEW WILL BE:- Robert Thorogood

#BookReview ‘The Last Lifeboat’ by Hazel Gaynor @HazelGaynor #WW2

6 Replies

What an emotional rollercoaster this book is. I’ve read a lot of fiction set during World War Two but The Last Lifeboat by Hazel Gaynor is a new take on wartime conflict and its effect on ordinary people. Children are being evacuated on ships, sent to safety in Canada, travelling in convoy across the Atlantic where German u-boats wait to attack. When the worst happens, Gaynor asks what does it take to survive?Hazel GaynorEngland 1940. After a short first chapter set in the lifeboat immediately after the u-boat attack, the story tracks back four months earlier. Alice King is a schoolteacher-now-librarian in Kent, a quiet job in a quiet place, but she longs to do something with her life. In London, widow Lily Nicholls considers the hard decision to send her two children, Georgie ten and younger brother Arthur, on an evacuation ship to Canada. Invasion threatens and the Blitz is just beginning. Lily struggles with competing fears, that her children may be killed in the bombing expected in London or that having sent them away for their safety they may die en-route or stay in Canada so she will never see them again. Lily is a daily help at a household in Richmond. Her employer Mrs Carr has already sent her two eldest children privately to Canada and the third, Molly, will go as soon as she’s recovered from a horse-riding accident. Deciding to register Georgie and Arthur and decide nearer the time, Lily queues next to a woman who introduces herself as mother of five Ada Fortune.
When Lily says goodbye to her children, she hands them into the care of ‘Auntie Alice,’ an escort with the Children’s Overseas Reception Board [CORB]. It is Alice’s first journey and she is excited, nervous, and worried about her pregnant sister Kitty left home alone. When the ship is torpedoed at night by a German u-boat there is enormous confusion. It is dark, disorientating, most people are asleep, distress drills forgotten. Alice finds herself the lone woman in a lifeboat of men and seven children, some from her own group, others are strangers. Thirty-five souls.
The story unfolds – and we already know Alice will be adrift in a lifeboat – through the eyes of Alice and Lily. It’s a slow mover at first as the scene is set but after the sinking, both women are waiting. One is hoping for rescue not daring to think of the alternative, the other hopeful then despairing, finally angry. Gaynor is especially good at writing the children, their characters, their influence on the adults, their bravery and ability to look beyond the horrible present up to the stars in the sky.
Inspired by the real life sinking in September 1940 of a vessel carrying ‘seavacuees,’ child refugees, Gaynor has brought new air to a story that made headlines and generated many letters of complaints when it happened, but is unfamiliar today. I’ve not been disappointed by a novel by Hazel Gaynor yet, she’s fast becoming one of my must-read authors.

Try the #FirstPara of THE LAST LIFEBOAT.

Read my reviews of these other novels by Hazel Gaynor:-
THE BIRD IN THE BAMBOO CAGE
THE COTTINGLEY SECRET

If you like this, try:-
‘The Collaborator’s Daughter’ by Eva Glyn
‘The Garden of Angels’ by David Hewson
‘A Beautiful Spy’ by Rachel Hore

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE LAST LIFEBOAT by Hazel Gaynor @HazelGaynor https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-7au via @SandraDanby

COMING SOON… THE NEXT BOOK I REVIEW WILL BE:- Suzanne Collins

#BookReview ‘All the Broken Places’ by John Boyne @JohnBoyneBooks #WW2

10 Replies

John Boyne is a fine writer. All the Broken Places, his sequel to The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, examines the nature of grief and guilt, of living a long life of secrets. Its some years since I read The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas but All the Broken Places stands on its own and can be read independently. John BoyneGretel Fernsby is ninety-one. It is London 2022 as she nervously awaits the new neighbours expected to move into the downstairs flat. She likes familiarity, routine, being anonymous. Gretel carries the guilt of something that happened in the war and which she has hidden, and lived with, for eighty years. The opening sentence sets up the story succinctly. ‘If every man is guilty of all the good he did not do, as Voltaire suggested, then I have spent a lifetime convincing myself that I am innocent of all the bad.’ Boyne explores the concepts of individual and collective guilt, of the sin of inaction, of the culpability of children and the offence of looking away.
Gretel’s younger brother was The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, their father commandant at Auschwitz. She buried all memories of her brother, unable to speak his name or say it silently in her own head, but is unable to forget him. We follow her life after the war, to France and Australia and finally to England. Always, she lives a life of secrets. Until the past comes bursting forth when nine-year old Henry moves in downstairs and Gretel sees his tears, his bruises, his silences. The memories come flooding back. As she considers whether to step in and defend Henry, she must risk revealing what she has hidden for eighty years. Will Gretel find a kind of peace?
It’s the best book I’ve read so far in 2023. There are surprises at the end, some beautiful detail. Emotional but never sentimental, Boyne doesn’t shy away from the horror of the Holocaust. Powerful and uncomfortable.

Click the title to read my reviews of these other novels by John Boyne:-
A HISTORY OF LONELINESS
A LADDER TO THE SKY
A TRAVELLER AT THE GATES OF WISDOM
STAY WHERE YOU ARE AND THEN LEAVE
THE HEART’S INVISIBLE FURIES… Curious? Read the #FirstPara of THE HEART’S INVISIBLE FURIES here.
WATER #1ELEMENTS
EARTH #2ELEMENTS

If you like this, try:-
‘The Aftermath’ by Rhidian Brook
‘Inflicted’ by Ria Frances
‘The Bird in the Bamboo Cage’ by Hazel Gaynor

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview ALL THE BROKEN PLACES by John Boyne @JohnBoyneBooks https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-646 via @SandraDanby

COMING SOON… THE NEXT BOOK I REVIEW WILL BE:-
Fiona Leitch

#BookReview ‘One Moonlit Night’ by Rachel Hore @Rachelhore #WW2

6 Replies

Life can turn on a sixpence and that’s what happens to Maddie and her two small daughters in the Blitz. One Moonlit Night by Rachel Hore doesn’t start with a glimpse of the main character’s ordinary life before the change happens. It starts with a shock… a family made homeless by a bomb. Rachel HoreAlone in the midst of chaos, her husband Philip has been missing for ten months since the British army’s retreat from Dunkirk, Maddie takes Sarah and Alice to Knyghton in Norfolk to stay with Philip’s elderly Aunt Gussie. Maddie is caught in limbo, unable to grieve for Philip, unable to make decisions, not accepting his probable death, while living in an isolated country house – where Philip spent his childhood – which is the focus of long-held rumour and superstition in the nearby village.
Trying to make a living as a book illustrator, Maddie is seldom without a pencil and paper. But when she draws the face of an unfamiliar young girl, enigmatic, mysterious, she doesn’t know where her inspiration came from. Instinctively she keeps her drawing secret, not wanting to upset the fragile atmosphere at Knyghton. A secret is being kept, by Aunt Gussie, Philip’s cousin Lyle who runs the Knyghton farm, by family retainers, the Fleggs, and Maddie is sure it surrounds this mysterious young woman.
Bookended by a Prologue and Epilogue both set in 1977, Hore tells the stories of Maddie and Philip during World War Two with a flashback to their meeting in 1934. Many of the book’s themes are established in this pre-war section. Wild animals, painted by Maddie, but shot by Philip; children raised while parents are absent; the sharing of some secrets and the keeping of others. It is a complex, emotional story as Maddie, who flees to Knyghton seeking sanctuary instead finds unexplained silences, whispers and rumours she fears are aimed at Philip. Meanwhile Philip, having survived a massacre of British troops by the German army, attempts to find a way home. Philip’s sections are tense, forlorn and at times hopeless, a vivid portrayal of soldiers fleeing through Occupied and Vichy France.
This is a slow-burning story which rewards the reader’s perseverance as tension in the final third picks up and Maddie finally finds some answers. It’s a book which rewards further reading as layers of information, missed on first reading, become significant.

Click the title to read my reviews of two other books by Rachel Hore:-
A BEAUTIFUL SPY
A WEEK IN PARIS
THE HIDDEN YEARS
THE LOVE CHILD

If you like this, try:-
‘The Book of Lies’ by Mary Horlock
‘The Tuscan Secret’ by Angela Petch
‘The Skylark’s Secret’ by Fiona Valpy

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview ONE MOONLIT NIGHT by Rachel Hore @Rachelhore https://wp.me/p5gEM4-5PJ via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Daughters of War’ by Dinah Jefferies @DinahJefferies #WW2 #adventure

7 Replies

It’s a while since I read a book in gulps, not wanting to put it down, not wanting to leave the story. Daughters of War by Dinah Jefferies is the first of a World War Two trilogy about three sisters. And what characters they are, each individual, quirky, vulnerable, stubborn, brave and refreshing. I lurched from having one favourite, then another. At the end I was equally drawn to each. Dinah JefferiesIn the Dordogne live three sisters – Hélène, Élise and Florence – alone in their mother’s house during the German occupation. Hélène is the eldest, a nurse, the mother hen, the worrier. Élise is the rebel, helping the Resistance, disappearing at night. Florence, the youngest, is a gardener, a cook, a nature lover. They are tired of the war, terrified by the Germans and their increasingly violent and indiscriminate reprisals, desperate for a normal life without remembering what that might be.
Backstory is important and there are many mysteries, unspoken memories and fears, which can only by explained when something happens to trigger understanding. We see the girls’ mother Claudette, in England for the war, only through their memories but she is a pivotal character nonetheless.
The story opens in spring 1944 when the girls’ quiet life at their stone cottage in the woods is altered by two arrivals. Jack, a British Special Operations soldier, has parachuted in with orders to train the Resistance in preparation for the invasion. Tomas, a young German soldier, has deserted and is found hiding in their garden shed. What follows is a tale of innocence, love, bravery, cruelty, loyalty and honour.
Jefferies’ descriptions of the French countryside – the trees, the birds, the wildflowers, the Dordogne scenery, coupled with the descriptions of Florence’s cooking – work as a shocking juxtaposition to the horror of war in this oh so beautiful tranquil place.
A page-turner.

Here are my reviews of the next books in the series:-
THE HIDDEN PALACE #2DAUGHTERSOFWAR
NIGHT TRAIN TO MARRAKECH #3DAUGHTERSOFWAR

Read my reviews of these standalone novels by Dinah Jefferies:-
THE SAPPHIRE WIDOW
THE TEA PLANTER’S WIFE
THE TUSCAN CONTESSA

If you like this, try these:-
‘Dangerous Women’ by Hope Adams
‘The Blue Afternoon’ by William Boyd
‘Birdcage Walk’ by Helen Dunmore

Here’s a link to share THIS post:
#BookReview DAUGHTERS OF WAR by Dinah Jefferies @DinahJefferies https://wp.me/p5gEM4-5vI via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘The Camomile Lawn’ by Mary Wesley #WW2

4 Replies

It’s many years since I first read The Camomile Lawn by  Mary Wesley. I remember liking it, and that one of the characters is called Calypso, but nothing else. So it was with delight that I read the wartime story of Calypso and her four cousins – Oliver, Polly, Walter and Sophy. It renewed my intention to re-read all Wesley’s novels. Mary WesleyThe story is enrichened by the mode of telling. It starts in Cornwall in the summer of 1939 as the cousins of assorted ages gather for what will be the last time. There is a poignancy hanging in the air as the run their ritual race, The Terror Run, along the clifftop path, joined by their neighbours, the Floyer twins.
The cousins are the children of the three Cuthbertson siblings – we see the parents only fleetingly, if not at all – but they are gathered at their Uncle Richard’s house and picnic on the camomile lawn. What follows are the piecemeal stories of individuals and how they overlap with each other as the war progresses. Overlaid, are short passages from the Eighties as they travel independently to Cornwall for a funeral. Drawn into the cousins’ stories are their neighbours, in Cornwall and London, wartime acquaintances, lovers, and refugees Max and Monika. Amidst the bombings, the rationing and the worries about loved ones fighting, Wesley tells a story of a family both united and separated, as individuals strike out on their own, liberated by wartime urgencies. There are affairs, unexpected babies, hints of underage sex, all without accusations of blame or betrayal. Each makes assumptions about the others, assumptions the reader may know are misplaced given we are privileged to see into the minds of each cousin, and sometimes assumptions which are proven right or wrong only at the very end of the novel.
Paths cross, diverge and cross again. Not everyone is nice, not everyone is honest. They are people getting through the war, trying to keep things together; some turn to drink and partying, one keeps guinea pigs, most feel emboldened by the openings presented to them by war. And all the time, fear lurks in the pit of their stomachs. And through it all, the house in Cornwall and memories of that last party on the camomile lawn, remind us of pre-war normality. At a time when ‘normal’ ceases to exist.
Very different from other wartime novels. Now a classic.

Read the #FirstPara of THE CAMOMILE LAWN

… and here’s my review of JUMPING THE QUEUE also by Wesley.

If you like this, try:-
‘The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society’ by Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows
‘Half of the Human Race’ by Antony Quinn
‘My Dear, I Wanted to Tell You’ by Louisa Young 

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE CAMOMILE LAWN by Mary Wesley https://wp.me/p5gEM4-48g via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘The Rose Code’ by Kate Quinn @Kate_Quinn #WW2 #Bletchley

4 Replies

The Rose Code by Kate Quinn is the first book I’ve read by this author. I was drawn in by the WW2 setting and promise of mystery, but it’s much more than that. There are two timelines; 1947 as the royal wedding of Princess Elizabeth approaches, and 1939 at the outbreak of war. At its centre are three young women who don’t quite fit into their worlds. War introduces something new to their lives. Opportunity. Advancement. Recognition. Friendship. Home. Kate QuinnMabs has grown up in Shoreditch but longs to escape. She follows her own plan of improvement – reading the classics, copying the accents of assistants in upper class shops – with the long-term aim of rescuing her younger sister Lucy from poverty. Osla is a Canadian society girl, rich, pretty, labelled as a dim deb who trains as a riveter to make Hurricanes. Both have mysterious interviews and are sent on a train journey to ‘Station X’. This turns out to be a large country mansion – Bletchley Park – where secret war work is undertaken. Both must sign the Official Secrets Act before they are admitted. At their lodgings, they meet Beth, downtrodden daughter of their strict religious landlady Mrs Finch.
Beth’s skill at crosswords is recognised and soon all three girls are working at ‘BP’. In their jobs – typing, translating, decoding – the three girls get to know each other and, despite the rules of secrecy, they learn how gossip inside ‘BP’ works. Soon they are promoted, learning top secret information before it is transmitted to government, before even Churchill. And with knowledge comes power, and danger.
We follow the three through romances – Osla with young naval officer, Prince Philip of Greece – and bombings. There is something to like and dislike about each woman making them realistic, rounded characters. Mab was my favourite, Osla slightly irritating, while Beth changes the most throughout the course of the book. The 1947 strand becomes a hunt for a traitor as the Cold War gets colder and a former WW2 ally becomes the enemy. The girls must revisit their wartime secrets to question the nature of truth and loyalty, to each other and to their country.
The Second World War is often thought of as a time of liberation for women doing the jobs of men and in some ways it was; but Quinn shows this was a transitory advantage – temporary, class driven, certain jobs only – and women were still ultimately dependant on a man in so many ways. As the women look back at their former lives we see how much, and how little, has changed for them.
Some of the coding puzzles went straight over my head but that didn’t really matter. The Bletchley setting is great, the gossip of the weekly scandal rag, the familiar names dropped – Alan Turing, Joan Clarke – the book club and 3am kidneys on toast. I’m not sure the 1947 royal wedding deadline adds much to the narrative, there’s enough threat without it. As I was getting towards the end of the book and was interrupted, I snatched up the book again at the next possible opportunity.

Here are my reviews of other novels by Kate Quinn:-
THE ALICE NETWORK
THE BRIAR CLUB
THE ROSE CODE

If you like this, try:-
‘Life After Life’ by Kate Atkinson
‘Another You’ by Jane Cable
‘Life Class’ by Pat Barker

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE ROSE CODE by Kate Quinn @Kate_Quinn https://wp.me/p5gEM4-5lQ via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘A Beautiful Spy’ by Rachel Hore @Rachelhore #WW2 #spies

4 Replies

Rachel Hore is one of my favourite go-to authors when I want well-written, thoughtful escapism. Her latest is A Beautiful Spy, a pre-Second World War spy story based on a real case involving the infiltration of a communist spy cell. Rachel HoreAt a garden party in the summer of 1928, Minnie Gray is bored. She’s there with her mother who is trying to fix up her up with another young man, when she notices a striking young woman. When the enigmatic Miss Pyle asks if Minnie would consider working for the government, Minnie recognises a chance to escape her mother’s suffocating attention and her boring job at the Automobile Association.
Minnie meets Captain Max Knight, ‘M’, and is recruited as a member of British Intelligence’s M Section with the code name M/12. She moves to London, finds a flat and a part-time secretarial job. Her first task is to attend meetings of the local Friends of the Soviet Union group and volunteer to help. Her new life must be kept a secret from her Tory-supporting family and boyfriend, Raymond.
What follows is Minnie’s progressive immersion in the British Communist Party. Always a self-reliant person, Minnie begins to struggle with the secrecy. Feeling she belongs nowhere, living her life in disconnected bubbles of people who are unaware of each other, she seeks out new friends at a hockey club that she can be herself with. Minnie’s career as a spy has a up and down trajectory, most of the time nothing happens, and she feels she is failing her bosses. But all the time she is cementing her reputation as a reliable, trustworthy secretary and this pays off when she is asked to take secret money to communist supporters in India. Minnie meticulously keeps records, writes reports for M and tries to be nosy while seeming disinterested. As the tension increases and she feels watched, the danger she is risking becomes real and not a game.
Hore added her own imagination to the factual story of real-life spy Olga Gray who spied for Maxwell Knight of British Intelligence and whose testimony helped to convict a number of communists in 1938 for treachery. Using a true story as the foundation of a novel has its advantages and disadvantages. At times the story pauses, for exposition or perhaps because there were periods in the real life Gray’s story when not a lot happened, and this means the flow of tension can seem stop-start.
I really enjoyed A Beautiful Spy. It’s the sort of novel I wish I could find more often. It certainly means I’ll be reading the non-fiction books mentioned by Hore in her Author’s Note at the end.

Click the title to read my reviews of other books by Rachel Hore:-
A WEEK IN PARIS
ONE MOONLIT NIGHT
THE HIDDEN YEARS
THE LOVE CHILD

If you like this, try:-
‘After the Party’ by Cressida Connolly
‘Midnight in Europe’ by Alan Furst
‘The Ways of the World’ by Robert Goddard

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview A BEAUTIFUL SPY by Rachel Hore @Rachelhore https://wp.me/p5gEM4-5lL via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Day’ by AL Kennedy @Writerer #WW2

5 Replies

Day, the title of this novel by AL Kennedy, does not refer to a period of twenty-four hours, but to Alfred Francis Day. Alfie. Rear gunner in a Lancaster in World War Two and now extra on the set of a war film. Past and present are mingled together as he starts to remember things he would rather forget. The passages in the bomber are electrifying, in their detail and understanding. The cold, the smell, the fear, how the professionalism of their training kicks in when the action starts. It is totally believable. AL KennedyThe timelines are mixed here as Alfred’s memories are inter-mingled: when Alfred was a member of the bomber crew; his time in a prisoner-of-war camp; and as a film extra in 1949. Where the novel is not so clear, for me, is the intermingling of these three timelines, though after fifty pages everything started to clarify. If you find this, persist and everything will fall into place.
Through Alfred’s memories and his conversations with Ivor, his post-war employer at a bookshop, his bomber crew and the other film extras, we start to piece together the story of his life. It is particularly poignant when he falls in love, heavily, after a fleeting encounter during a bombing raid in London. He meets Joyce in a shelter and from then on she fills his head, when his head should be concentrating on shooting down enemy fighters as his crew drops bombs on Hamburg. ‘Turning his head and turning his head while the heath beyond him dreams, his head pressing back in his pillow and eyes closed and no clear memory he can see, only the wonder that her heartbeat was everywhere in her skin.’
Alfie is a complex character. He is a small man who reads to educate himself. He is nicknamed ‘Boss’ by his flight crew even though he is not the skipper. In flight training, he asks Sergeant Hartnell to show him how to fight and win. ‘Look, son… You’re not the first. Happens quite often in fact. Lads come along and they ask me for help… help with an argument they’ve got to settle back home…’ He tells Alfred his best bet is to hit them from behind with a bit of pipe, but when Alfred gets his chance he throws bricks.
We learn most about him as he remembers his mother and father, both of whom die during the war. In Alfred’s head, his mother and Joyce seem connected and he learns that memories are fickle, the things we would rather forget are the ones that return. ‘Some memories, the ones you’d rather keep – the more you tried to look at them, the more they wore away.’

And here are my reviews of other AL Kennedy novels:-
ALL THE RAGE
SERIOUS SWEET

If you like this, try:-
‘The Paying Guests’ by Sarah Waters
‘The Slaves of Solitude’ by Patrick Hamilton
‘Wake’ by Anna Hope

And if you’d like to share a link, try:
#BookReview DAY by AL Kennedy @Writerer via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2C6

#BookReview ‘The Translation of Love’ by Lynne Kutsukake #WW2 #war

2 Replies

How to describe The Translation of Love by Lynne Kutsukake? What a charming and unusual novel it is, if at some times a trifle confusing. The setting is unusual, post-war Tokyo when the country is being run by the US General MacArthur and at times it reminded me of Rhidian Brook’s wonderful The Aftermath set in post-war Berlin. It is about war and what it does to us, how a broken society can ever begin to heal, how the young will ever be able to live a normal life, when the word normal ceases to exist. Lynne KutsukakeSensitively written, each page draws a picture of Tokyo from a different point of view – Aya, a Japanese-Canadian schoolgirl feels the odd one out in her new school; her classmate Fumi misses her elder sister who left home to find work; Sumiko has a job in a dance hall dancing with the GIs but is ashamed to tell her family what she is doing; Kondo Sensei, the teacher of the younger girls and also part-time translator and writer of letters; and Matt Matsumoto, the Japanese-American soldier who translates the letters sent to General MacArthur by Japanese citizens.
Letters are an important tool in this story which is essentially a young girl’s quest to find her sister. When Fumi finds out that Aya can write in English, she asks for her to write a letter to General MacArthur asking for his help to find her Sumiko. As the letter changes hands and Matt and a colleague become involved in searching for Sumiko, the story unfolds gently against a terrible backdrop of bomb damage, poverty, starvation, pride, culture clash and above all the determination to survive.
It was a while before all the Japanese characters, and some of the Japanese vocabulary, started to fall into place. A touching story inspired by the letters written by Japanese citizens to MacArthur, it draws a picture of a period in Japanese history of which I knew nothing.

If you like this, try:-
‘The Bird in the Bamboo Cage’ by Hazel Gaynor
‘The Aftermath’ by Rhidian Brook
‘Homeland’ by Clare Francis

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE TRANSLATION OF LOVE by Lynne Kutsukake via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2cE