Tag Archives: WW2

#BookReview ‘The Silence in Between’ by Josie Ferguson @Inky_Josie #WW2 #BerlinWall

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The Silence in Between by Josie Ferguson is a book that stays with you long after you’ve finished it. Telling the stories of a mother and daughter in 1940s and 1960s Berlin, it is an emotional, sad and realistic story of the long-lasting effects of war on the women left at home while the men went to fight. Josie FergusonLisette and her daughter Elly are alike in their love of music. But while Elly can hear the personal music of everyone she meets, a sensory skill that gives her an insight into character and personality, her mother Lisette has lost her voice and her music. It is 1961 and Lisette has given birth to her second child, Axel, who she knows immediately is her favourite. When Axel is kept in hospital for tests, Lisette goes home overnight to recover. But in the morning a wall has appeared in Berlin, dividing the Soviet-managed sector from that of the Allies. Lisette is in East Germany. Axel’s hospital is in the West. The trauma, helplessness, fear and anger are well-expressed and hard-hitting. Lisette’s oldest child, Elly, is sixteen, a troubled teenager who feels unloved by her mother. The loss of Axel and the torment of her mother makes Elly look with new eyes at the world around her; she takes a courageous and impulsive decision.
In the wartime segment, 1938-1946, Lisette is a teenager going to dances with her girlfriends and wishing her best friend Julius would kiss her. But as first her father then Julius and other schoolfriends go to fight, Lisette sees the world through new eyes. First her father is declared missing in action and her mother Rita begins to act strangely, forgetful with empty blank moments. Lisette becomes the responsible adult in the flat, despite her young age, caring for her mother and elderly neighbour Frau Weber. Then Julius returns on leave and is a haunted man, a shadow of the boy she waved goodbye to, unable to forget the things he has seen and done. And suddenly the war is being lost as the Soviets enter Berlin and no woman is safe.
This is not an easy read but despite this I found myself reading just one more chapter, wanting to know what happens to Lisette and Elly. Both face impossible choices; decisions that will stay with them whatever the outcome, with repercussions stretching into the unimagined future.
A very affecting novel, showing the post-war trauma of the defeated nation and a reminder that German women were victims too.

If you like this, try:-
‘The Aftermath’ by Rhidian Brook
‘White Chrysanthemum’ by Mary Lynn Bracht
‘Homeland’ by Clare Francis

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE SILENCE IN BETWEEN by Josie Ferguson @Inky_Josie https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-8en via @SandraDanby

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

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

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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

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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

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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
THE WEIGHT OF ANGELS
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 share a link:
#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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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 ‘A Wreath of Roses’ by Elizabeth Taylor #historical

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There are some novels that you want to start read again as soon as you’ve finished it. To appreciate the finer details, unravel sub-text, and simply to admire. A Wreath of Roses by Elizabeth Taylor had that effect on me. Elizabeth Taylor

It is described in reviews as ‘her darkest novel’. What fascinated me was the inter-play between the three key female characters, how they see each other, and themselves, how they behave individually and together. Multiple contradictions complicated by self-delusions and self-awareness. I don’t mean to seem cryptic. The story is simple, as is often the way with Taylor.
In that period after the Second World war when life begins to look normal, the undercurrents of the war experience are everywhere. Camilla and Liz are staying with Frances, Liz’s former governess, for their annual summer holiday. It is a habit forged by years with happy memories of podding peas and sharing stories. Except this year is different. Liz is now married and has brought her baby, Harry. Frances, an artist, is now painting dark tortured pictures rather than feminine florals and portraits. And Camilla has a shocking experience on her journey to stay with Frances; she witnesses a suicide at a train station that makes her melancholy, lonely and inadequate. She looks at herself in the dressing table mirror, ‘Her flesh was golden as an apricot; her hair, in contrast, looked tarnished and harshly bright.’
Taylor inserts three male characters as wedges into the cosiness of the three women. Camilla resents Arthur, Liz’s husband, for taking her friend away. Richard Elton, who with Camilla is there when the suicide happens, is staying at a pub in the village. Camilla feels sorry for him and at the same time attracted to him and will not listen to Liz’s instinctive uneasiness about him. Morland Beddoes is a collector of Frances’ work, he arrives in the village and stays at the same pub as Elton; he too feels uneasy about the man’s motivations. A friendly sort who finds himself the recipient of peoples’ woes, ‘Morland Beddoes was not in the last self-infatuated. He loved himself only as much as self-respect required, and the reason why he saw himself so clearly was that he looked not often, but suddenly, so catching himself unawares.’
This is a dark novel, but not in today’s meaning of psychological thriller. It is a study of ageing, friendship, the power of sexual tension, and it is sublimely written.

Read my reviews of other books by Elizabeth Taylor:-
A VIEW OF THE HARBOUR
ANGEL
AT MRS LIPPINCOTE’S
IN A SUMMER SEASON
THE SLEEPING BEAUTY

If you like this, try:-
‘All My Puny Sorrows’ by Miriam Toews
‘We Are Water’ by Wally Lamb
‘All the Birds, Singing’ by Evie Wyld

And if you’d like to share a link:
#BookReview A WREATH OF ROSES by Elizabeth Taylor https://wp.me/p5gEM4-3uV via @SandraDanby