A WWII historical novel by a Nottingham, England writer, this novelist has to choose between sending her only daughter to a safer but unknown place for the duration of the war or keeping her with her and risking her life. The bond between mother and daughter is strong as the single mother has already lost her widowed father who owned the Tower bookshop where she worked, before it burned down, killing him. Her problematic husband also has died in a motor vehicle accident. The upshot is that the mother finds a job in the Boots Book-Lovers Library working under an alias as married women with children were not allowed to work outside of the home. As for the daughter, after two stints in safer homes, one very abusive, the eight-year old returns to live with her mother, then is taken to her less-than friendly in-laws, runs away and at one point seems to have been killed.
The characters are easy to keep straight and the writing flows smoothly. There is a lot of mental anguish as families are torn apart, some members showing up later after being presumed dead. The love of books with many old classics cited is what unites the characters. The scene of men returning from Dunkirk is touching and scary as they seem to be losing the war.
But none of the characters are what they seem to be when first introduced, and most seem too good to be true when their background is slowly revealed.
Not to belittle the emotional anguish that the war wrought, the extreme pathos became a bit excessive for this reader who was throughly indoctrinated into never showing any emotion.(The day my mother received the telegram stating that her favourite brother had been killed, she proceeded to cook supper for the threshing crew, never mentioning it until later.) Nevertheless this is a good read.
4.0/5
Thanks, Barb.
The Passionate Reader 