Short Story Wednesday: Wave Me Goodbye, Anne Boston, ed.

 

I read a few stories in this book in November 2022, and it took me over a year to return to it. Wave Me Goodbye is an anthology of stories about World War II; all the authors are women and most of the stories were published between 1939 and 1949; all but one story was written at that time. Many of the stories are about the home front, focusing on the lives of the people who did not go off to war, and in this case, mostly the experiences of the women left behind.

The collection was first put together and published in 1988. The "Introduction," written by the editor, Anne Boston, for this new printing, is excellent. There are two informational sections at the end. The "Notes on the Authors" section provides background information on each author, which was especially useful to me because I had not read anything by most of the authors. The "Acknowledgements" section provides information on when and where the stories were published.

Here are my thoughts on a few of the stories I read recently...

Kay Boyle's "Defeat" is about French soldiers returning to France after they have been defeated by the Germans. They are disappointed and disenchanted with the reception they get from the French citizens they encounter. This story was published in the May 17, 1941 issue of The New Yorker.

In "Goodbye My Love" by Mollie Panter-Downes, a married couple have a few days together before he has to leave for a posting during the war, destination unknown. Once he has gone, she finally settles into some acceptance of his absence. Then there is a brief reprieve; he won't be leaving for a week or more, and she will have to go through the agonizing buildup to his departure once again.

Two stories cover similar subjects: "Miss Anstruther's Letters" by Rose Macaulay and "Night in the Front Line" by Molly Lefebure. They deal with the devastation of the Blitz, the terror of waiting for the bombing to end, and the loss of a place to live and personal treasures.

In Olivia Manning’s "A Journey" a woman travels to Cluj to report on the Hungarian occupation of Transylvania, a region in Romania. When the reporter gets to Cluj, the city is in chaos, and it is hard to find a place to stay. She does her best to get the story she needs, then has a harrowing experience trying to get out of the city, as everyone else is also desperate to leave. 

Other stories I read were:

• Anna Kavan's "Face of My People"
• Barbara Pym's "Goodbye Balkan Capital"
• Jean Rhys’s "I Spy a Stranger"

All of the stories I read were good, although many of them were sad or depressing. I have seventeen stories left to read. I like that most of the stories are between 10-15 pages long.

Other writers represented are Elizabeth Taylor, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Doris Lessing, Inez Holden, Beryl Bainbridge, Edna Ferber, Dorothy Parker, Elizabeth Bowen, Marjorie Sharp, Pat Frank, Diana Gardner, Malachi Whitaker, Ann Chadwick, A. L. Barker, Jean Stafford and Stevie Smith.

Operation Mincemeat: Ben Macintyre

The subtitle of this book is: "How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory."

Summary from the dust jacket of the book:

In 1943, from a windowless London basement office, two intelligence officers conceived a plan that was both simple and complicated—Operation Mincemeat. The purpose? To deceive the Nazis into thinking the Allies were planning to attack Europe by way of Greece or Sardinia, rather than Sicily, as the Nazis had assumed and the Allies ultimately chose. 

Charles Cholmondeley of MI5 and the British naval intelligence officer Ewen Montagu could not have been more different. Cholmondeley was a dreamer seeking adventure. Montagu was an aristocratic, detail-oriented barrister. But together they were the perfect team and created an ingenious plan: Get a corpse, equip it with secret (but false and misleading) papers concerning the invasion, then drop it off the coast of Spain where German spies would, they hoped, take the bait. The idea was approved by British intelligence officials, including Ian Fleming (creator of James Bond). Winston Churchill believed it might ring true to the Axis and help bring victory to the Allies.

This book brought to my attention an aspect of espionage that I had not previously thought much about. It describes the efforts of intelligence agents to disseminate false information to the enemy in order to mislead them. The overall plan to deceive the Germans was named Operation Barclay, and included providing false information about troop movements in the Balkan area to the enemy.

The story of the development of the plan for Operation Mincemeat and then the carrying out of it (including finding a body to use that would fit their needs, dressing it, and creating fake documents to convey the information) was extremely interesting. Most of the book was about this effort.

But just as exciting and absorbing were the chapters on the effort to get the body delivered to the right place on the coast of Spain and the follow-up chapters at the end on how the attack on Sicily was planned and carried out, and various military men who participated. 

Ben Macintyre is a respected author of this type of nonfiction. It seems that he mostly specializes in espionage-related topics. His writing is very good. If there were any chapters that were difficult for me, they were towards the beginning when there are many people and situations described, plus the layers of bureaucracy to get agreement on the plan. Once I got settled in and the focus was on the main players in the carrying out of the plot, every chapter was a delight to read.

My husband read this book in 2013, and enjoyed it as much as I did. This is his review at Goodreads:

This history of a World War II hoax is so full of memorable characters (I find the absolutely fearless and charmed Lieutenant Bill Jewell of the British submarine HMS Seraph to be at the top of a very high memorable list) and fascinating detail that it reads like a first rate thriller. Operation Mincemeat was an elaborate British plan designed to convince German forces that an expected invasion of Sicily was actually going to take place elsewhere. In hindsight, it is amazing the plan succeeded, given all the details that needed to be accepted (or overlooked) by the Germans. A history that is not at all dry, this book is highly recommended.

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Publisher:   Harmony Books, 2010
Length:       324 pages
Format:      Hardcover
Genre:       History, nonfiction
Source:      Borrowed from my husband.

SS-GB: Len Deighton

SS-GB is an alternate history in which England has been invaded by Germany. 

Summary from the flyleaf (dust jacket) of my edition:

1941, and England invaded – and defeated – by the Germans...

The King is a hostage in the tower, the Queen and Princesses have fled to Australia, Churchill has been executed by a firing squad, Englishmen are being deported to work in German factories and the dreaded SS is in charge of Scotland Yard. London is in shock. The very look of daily life is a walking nightmare of German uniforms, artifacts, regulations. There are collaborators. There are profiteers. But there are others working in hope, in secret, and desperate danger, against the invader. And still others are living strangely ambiguous lives – none more so than Detective Superintendent Douglas Archer ("Archer of the yard" as the press like to call him), trying to maintain a peculiarly, almost sacredly, British institution under a Nazi chief.

At the start of the story, Archer is working on what looks like a routine murder case, working under Gruppenführer Fritz Kellerman of the SS. However, that case leads him into encounters with people in the Resistance and he soon has a new assignment, working under an enemy of Kellerman's, Standartenführer Huth, also part of the SS, but under orders from Himmler. 

The people in the resistance who contact him want to rescue the King from the Tower of London and move him to the US. The powers in the US don't want the King to be in North America at all. And there are groups of Germans who are willing to help with any attempt to move the King out the UK. The plot has many twists and turns, and you never know who is trustworthy and who is not. 

My Thoughts:

I have mentioned often on this blog that Len Deighton is one of my favorite authors. I love his writing. This book is no exception. This book is more like his Nameless Spy series in that many of the characters remain a mystery to the reader (or at least to this one). In the Bernard Samson series of nine books you get to know the characters much more. 

Many of Deighton's novels are set in Germany, during the Cold War.  He has a great depth of knowledge of German history, including the years during World War II, so I trust his descriptions of the various German organizations, including the SS, the Gestapo, and the Wehrmacht (military). I find it really hard to keep up with all the military and other titles for the German characters, which is a problem I have with a lot of World War II novels. But that is not the author's fault.

This is a pretty depressing novel; it feels very real and scary. At about 3/4 of the way through I was sure that the story was not going to end well. I was only half right. The ending is ambiguous but hopeful. Nevertheless, I am so glad that I finally read this book, which has been on my TBR pile for 13 years.

We started watching the TV miniseries adaptation of this book (from 2017)  a couple of days after I finished reading the book. It was interesting to see this approach to the book. In the two episodes I have seen so far, it is pretty close to the book, and I like the actor playing Douglas Archer. 

Apparently there are many books depicting an alternate ending to World War II where the Nazis win the war. I have read The Man in the High Castle by Philip Dick, but I have not yet read Fatherland by Robert Harris. This Wikipeda article lists many such depictions in literature and film.

I liked this assessment from Mike Ripley's review at Shots Magazine:

Len Deighton’s SS-GB is a remarkable thriller, starting as a whodunit, morphing into a spy story and then a conspiracy thriller with global implications, but ultimately it is a novel about a decent man trying to do good job of upholding the law even as his world crumbles around him. 

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society: Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

 

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is an epistolary novel set in London and on Guernsey in 1946. Juliet Ashton, an author who lives in London, receives a letter from Dawsey Adams, a pig farmer who lives on Guernsey. Dawsey owns a copy of a book by Charles Lamb that Juliet once owned and wrote her name in. Dawsey asks her to recommend a bookshop in London which will sell him more books by Charles Lamb, as there are no bookshops on Guernsey after the war. He mentions the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society in his letter, and Juliet is intrigued by the Society and why it was formed. And thus a correspondence begins that eventually leads to many friendships.

This was the seventh book I read for the 20 Books of Summer challenge. In addition to being a historical fiction book about World War II, it is a book about books and celebrates reading. Thus it fits into the Bookish Books Reading Challenge. Many letters by the residents on Guernsey related their reading, what they read and why. 

My thoughts:

I enjoyed the story told through letters. In addition to Dawsey, Juliet writes to her editor, Sidney, and her best friend, Sophie, Sidney's younger sister who lives in Scotland. Once the correspondence with Dawsey Adams gets going, many other people on Guernsey start writing to Juliet, and she learns more about the book club and life on Guernsey during the war. I found reading about all of these people delightful, even the spiteful and entitled ones. 

Before reading this book, I was only vaguely aware of the German occupation of Guernsey during World War II, so I learned a lot from the book. Now I want to read some nonfiction on that subject. Any suggestions would be welcome.

I was appalled at the conditions on the island after the Germans took over. It wasn't just being under the rule of the Germans, but also the lack of food, which towards the end of the war affected the German soldiers also.

An incident that was especially distressing to read about was the evacuation of school children from the island. The parents had to decide whether it was better to have their children evacuated to some spot unknown in the UK or stay on Guernsey, and some parents did not hear from their evacuated children again until after the war.

Overall, I greatly enjoyed reading this book. The story about the war and the occupation was dark, but there were pleasant parts too, including the friendships on the island and how they supported each other. This book is not a mystery at all, but there are many small mysteries within the plot, and I enjoyed those. 

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Publisher: Dial Press, 2009 (orig. publ. 2008)
Length:    291 pages
Format:    Trade paperback
Setting:    UK, London and Guernsey 
Genre:     Historical Fiction
Source:    Purchased at the Planned Parenthood Book Sale, 2018.

Short Story Wednesday: "I Was Too Ignorant" by Rosamond Oppersdorff

This story is quite short, only 10 pages long, but to me it felt much longer.

It is about a woman who is working in a military hospital on a base in Brittany during World War II. She has no nursing training at all. She is stuck at the camp because her husband was there and now she cannot leave. Wanting to help, she volunteers to work in the hospital, doing whatever is needed. The hospital wing she is assigned to has 250 beds, cared for by four nurses, plus her, doing the best they can. 

The action in this story takes place between the Battle of Flanders and the Battle of France. Following the Battle of Flanders the hospital is filled with very badly wounded soldiers. 

The woman narrates the story, relating the jobs she is given to do, her fear of doing the wrong thing, the condition of the men who have been hospitalized. 

The story is very moving and very sad. 

"I Was Too Ignorant" was published in Wave Me Goodbye: Stories of the Second World War, edited by Anne Boston. 

The book has an excellent introduction, explaining how the stories were chosen. The authors are all women and the stories took place between 1939 and 1949; all but one story was written at that time. The stories are mostly home front stories (per the introduction). The collection was first put together and published in 1988; the introduction was written by the editor for this new printing.

From the "Notes on the Authors" in Wave Me Goodbye:

Rosamond Oppersdorf, American by birth, lived most of her life in Paris until the outbreak of the war. Her husband was Polish, and after leaving France in 1940 she worked in a Polish Military hospital in Scotland. "I Was Too Ignorant" was published in New Writing and Daylight, edited by John Lehmann, in 1942.

I have read only two additional stories in this book. Both are brief but very good. "When the Waters Came" by Rosamond Lehmann is about 6 pages long, takes place during the "phoney war," and isn't really much about the war at all. "Gas Masks" by Jan Struther is only 3 pages long, and is a Mrs. Miniver story.

I saw a review of this book recently at Katrina's Pining for the West blog, and bought a copy shortly after that. Check out her review.

The Assault: Harry Mulisch

The Assault by Harry Mulisch was a great read, brief and straightforward, and very effective. Set in the Netherlands, it starts with a horrendous event during World War II.

Near the end of the war, when many countries in Europe had been liberated, the Netherlands was still occupied. A policeman in the city of Haarlem, who was collaborating with the Germans, was shot down in a small neighborhood. Reprisals are taken and many people are killed, including children. This novel takes that one event and shows how it affected the people who were involved.  It continues up to 1980. 

The focus of the novel is on Anton Steenwijk, who is only 12 years old when the event happens. It follows him through important times in his life, each of which trigger memories and emotions in him.

The story is based on a real event that happened during the war, although I have no idea how closely it follows the actual event.

This historical novel about World War II was very different from others I have read. I found the writing style mesmerizing. Along the way there are revelations and surprises both for Anton and the reader. I especially like that the story focuses on a child and how he carries the trauma of the war with him throughout his life. 

This book was recommended to me by Patricia Abbott at Pattinase. Also see Sam Sattler's review at Book Chase.

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Publisher:   Pantheon, 2016 (orig. pub. 1982)
Translated from the Dutch by Claire Nicolas White
Length:       185 pages
Format:       Trade Paperback
Setting:       Netherlands, World War II
Genre:        Historical Fiction
Source:       A recent purchase.

Novellas in November: Carte Blanche by Carlo Lucarelli

Carte Blanche is a novella by Carlo Lucarelli, translated from Italian, the first in a trilogy. The setting is April 1945 in Italy. 

The story starts shortly before the end of World War II, in the final days of the Fascist regime in Italy. The protagonist is a policeman in the regular police, Commissario De Luca, who only recently transferred from another police group that worked under the direction of Mussolini. He just wants to solve crimes without having political interference, but that seems impossible in Italy during the war.

De Luca's first assignment in the regular police is to find who is responsible for the murder of a member of the Fascist party, Vittorio Rehinard. This investigation brings him into the world of the rich and privileged. After a day or two of investigation, De Luca begins to understand that no one in a position of power in the police or the government cares whether the killer is caught. He cares, though, and he continues to pursue the investigation.

From the description on the Europa edition that I read:

Carte Blanche, the first installment in Carlo Lucarelli's "De Luca Trilogy," is much more than a first-rate crime story. It is also an investigation into the workings of justice in a state that is crumbling under the weight of profound historic change.

 

My thoughts:

• The Preface by the author is fantastic, explaining his inspiration for writing the story. He followed this story up with two more short novels featuring Comissario De Luca, The Damned Season and Via Delle Oche.
• I nearly always enjoy crime fiction set around the time of World War II, but I have not read many books set in Italy during that time. Thus I learned about new aspects of World War II.
• The story is fast-paced and never boring. The tension is maintained throughout. De Luca is  sometimes perplexed and concerned about his future and the future of the country, but he isn't going to give up on the investigation. 
• At times I was a bit confused about the different factions in Italy, and the many characters and whose side they were on, but that was a minor distraction.

I read this for the "Literature in Translation" Week in the Novellas in November 2021 reading event. The event celebrates the short novel, or novella. The host blogs are 746 Books and Bookish Beck. 

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Publisher:    Europa Editions, 2006 (orig. pub. 1990)
Translator:  Michael Reynolds
Length:       93 pages
Format:      Trade Paperback
Series:        De Luca Trilogy, #1
Setting:       Italy
Genre:        Police Procedural
Source:       Purchased at Planned Parenthood book sale, 2010.

Miss Silver Deals with Death: Patricia Wentworth

Miss Silver Deals with Death has one of my favorite  settings for a mystery... London during World War II. Actually I like stories of any type taking place on the homefront in any part of England. But stories actually written at that time are the most interesting.

Meade Underwood is living with her aunt in a flat in Valendeur House in London during the war. She was on a ship that was torpedoed while travelling back to the UK from America; she survived, her fiancé did not. Then she runs into Giles, her fiancé, on the street and finds that he was rescued and has lost his memory. Coincidentally, a woman, Carola Roland, who lives in another flat in the same building also knows Giles, and claims that they were once married. And then Carola is killed and of course Giles is a suspect. In addition, someone is blackmailing the residents of Valendeur House and Miss Silver is called in to sort it all out.

That short synopsis sounds complicated enough, but there are five more occupied flats in the building and each has occupants with their own interesting story. As often happens in this series, Miss Silver does not show up very much until there is a murder and that doesn't happen until almost halfway through the book. So, for readers who want the crime and the investigation to start fairly early in the book, this might not appeal. I usually like that kind of story, where there is a good bit of set up of the characters and the situation before the crime takes place.

Another recurring element in Miss Silver books is a romance. In this case we have not just one but two romances. In addition to Meade's reunion with her lover that was thought to be dead, two other tenants at Vandeleur House are attracted to each other. I used to find this irritating in mysteries, now it really depends on the author and the book; in this case, I liked it fine.

The policemen who deal with the crime are Chief Inspector Lamb and Sergeant Abbott. Sergeant Abbott is more accepting of Miss Silver's help in the investigation than the inspector. These policemen often feature in Miss Silver mysteries.

I did enjoy this book very much. In addition to the setting, I liked the way Wentworth introduces all the characters and we eventually learn about their personalities in more depth, and how the war has changed their lives. And I always enjoy Miss Silver and her methods of detection. The book was recommended to me by Moira at Clothes in Books (under the title Miss Silver Intervenes); her post is here.

The illustration on the cover of the paperback is by John Jinks, whose art also was on covers of mysteries by Walter Mosley and Stuart Palmer.

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Publisher: HarperPerennial, 1991 (first publ. 1944)
Length:    231 pages
Format:    Trade Paperback
Series:     Miss Silver Mysteries #6
Setting:    UK 
Genre:     Mystery

Source:    I purchased my copy at the Planned Parenthood book sale in 2017.

Pearls before Swine: Margery Allingham

I am rereading the Albert Campion series by Margery Allingham in order, although I have been tempted to skip over a few of the books and move on to Tiger in the Smoke. For some reason I had the impression I wasn't going to like this book that much (even though I am a huge fan of the series), but as soon as I started reading I was again under the spell of Allingham's writing.

As the novel starts, we know that Albert Campion, returned to London from a long wartime assignment, is taking a bath in preparation for catching a train to the country. But we also know that two people have brought a dead body into his London flat and laid it on his bed and we suspect that this will delay his train trip. We soon find out that the two people carrying the dead body are Mr. Lugg, Campion's manservant, and Lady Carados, elderly mother of John, Marquess of Carados, now a war hero. They found the body in Lord Carados' bed, and they don't want it to be found there.

This book is like the previous book in the series, Traitor's Purse. The reader doesn't know for a good portion of the story exactly what is going on, and neither does Albert Campion. He stays in London out of loyalty to Lord Carados, but he is aggravated that he is expected to stay and help with the investigation, when all the facts are not shared with him. The situation can be confusing, thus I would not recommend this book as an entry point to the series. But for me, the slow reveal of the full situation and the pulling together of the various mysteries was rewarding and entertaining.

I especially enjoyed this for the setting of wartime London, at the end of the war. Lord Carados' mansion is livable and is housing a good number of his friends, but has been damaged by the bombing. The other three homes on the square where he lives have much worse damage. Lugg is an ambulance driver during the Blitz, and Lady Carados runs a voluntary canteen in the square.

I usually read these books equally for the mystery and the characters and their stories, but this time the plot was admittedly very hard to follow. In a review of a previous book, Flowers for the Judge, I noted: "Margery Allingham's plots are sometimes fantastical; there are weird, eccentric characters, who seem to be in the book for no reason." There is also often an element of romance as a side plot. And, as usual, I enjoyed the whole experience, quirky characters and all.

This book was originally published in the UK as Coroner's Pidgin. See the review at Past Offences.


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Publisher:  Bantam, 1984. Orig. pub. 1945.
Length:     216 pages
Format:     Paperback
Series:      Albert Campion
Setting:    UK, mostly London
Genre:      Mystery
Source:    I purchased my copy. 

Perfect Gallows: Peter Dickinson

I have been reading a lot of books set during World War II lately, and Perfect Gallows is one of the best of them.

"About the book" from the author's website:

In 1875 Arnold Wragge left the back streets of Portsmouth for the diamond fields of South Africa. Twenty years later he returned a millionaire, built himself a mansion in the Downs, and sired two daughters and a son. When the son is missing, presumed killed, in the Allied invasion of Italy, he sends for his great-great-nephew Andrew, to come from the same back streets and be inspected as a potential heir.

Andrew isn’t interested. He is set on a career on the stage. One of Sir Arnold’s daughters, his cousin Elspeth, equally stage-struck in her time, persuades him to take part in her proposed amateur production of The Tempest. The park is full of American soldiers preparing for the invasion of Normandy. In the middle of all the activity a stranger appears, claiming to be the missing heir.

Forty years later Andrew, now the famous Adrian Waring, tells the story to his partner and explains his own part in the tragedy that followed.

Peter Dickinson has long been one of my favorite authors, and several of his mystery novels feature dual timelines where the older time setting is during (or around) World War II. This story opens in 1944 with Andrew discovering a death in the dovecote on the grounds of The Mimms, the home of his wealthy uncle. Although the death could be suicide, Andrew can see that it has been faked to look that way. In 1986, Andrew returns to The Mimms for an estate sale, and memories of the death and his part in it return. Most of the novel covers the time in 1944 that Andrew spent at The Mimms leading up to his discovery of the body.

Andrew is young, soon to be conscripted into the military, but even at this age he knows he wants to be an actor and that he is very good at it. Everything he does, every thought he has, is focused on learning more about acting. Every experience is stored in his memory for use in future roles. Many of the activities in the story center around a performance of The Tempest, which is being organized by his cousin, Elspeth Wragge, but referred to most often as Cousin Brown. (Which sometimes makes things confusing.) His association with Elspeth is fortuitous because she sees his talent and can understand his aspirations in the theater.

Since the majority of this novel is set in 1944, in the days leading up to D-Day, the dual timelines are not confusing at all. And the chapters that switch to a new timeline are clearly marked. It is partially the picture of Andrew's life before the war contrasted with the older Adrian (the name he took as he began his acting career) that appealed to me so much. I will note that some readers find the main character an unlikable character and could not get past that.

This novel worked for me both as a mystery and a depiction of Britain during the war, after the US had joined in the war. The Mimms is occupied by US forces gearing up for the invasion of France. This novel is a very interesting look at how that affected the household, both the Wragge family and the servants, and the relationships between the US military and the British in situations like this.

This is what P.D. James had to say about this book:

A new Peter Dickinson novel is a keenly-awaited event for all those aficionados of the detective story who demand a great deal more than an ingenious puzzle. He is the true original, a superb writer who revitalises the conventions of the mystery genre to give us novels present them. He is incapable of writing a trite or inelegant sentence, and he creates characters who are true eccentrics but never caricatures. From the marvellous first chapter of Perfect Gallows when we encounter the hanging body in the dovecote, we know we are once again in the safe hands of a master.

Jo Walton has a wonderful post at Tor.com: Perfect Mystery: Peter Dickinson’s Perfect Gallows.

My favorite book by Dickinson is King & Joker, an alternate history set in an England where George V's elder brother did not die but lived to become King Victor I, and is later succeeded by his grandson, King Victor II.

I am also very fond of his unusual mystery series featuring Superintendent Jimmy Pibble. See my reviews of The Glass-Sided Ants' Nest and The Old English Peep Show.


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Publisher:  Pantheon Books, 1988. 
Length:     234 pages
Format:     Hardcover
Setting:     UK, World War II and 1986
Genre:      Historical Mystery
Source:    I purchased this book.

The Tin Flute: Gabrielle Roy

The Tin Flute is a classic Canadian novel, first published in French as Bonheur d'occasion. The book tells the story of the Lacasse family in the St. Henri area in Montreal, during World War II. They are poor, and only the oldest daughter, Florentine, is working. Eugene, the oldest brother, has joined the military. It took me a while to get into the story, but about halfway into the book it took hold of me and I could not stop reading.

This is how the story begins:

Toward noon, Florentine had taken to watching out for the young man who, yesterday, while seeming to joke around, had let her know he found her pretty.

The fever of the bazaar rose in her blood, a kind of jangled nervousness mingled with the vague feeling that one day in this teeming store things would come to a halt and her life would find its goal. It never occurred to her to think she could meet her destiny anywhere but here, in the overpowering smell of caramel, before the great mirrors hung on the wall with their narrow strips of gummed paper announcing the day’s menu, to the summary clicking of the cash register, the very voice of her impatience. Everything in the place summed up for her the hasty, hectic poverty of her whole life in St. Henri.

The story centers around Rose-Anna, the mother, and Florentine. With eight children in the family, Rose-Anna is again pregnant. Her youngest child, Daniel, is in very ill health. The father, Azarius, is usually unemployed, a dreamer, always leaving one job for a "better" opportunity and spending most of his time away from home talking with a group of men, young and old, about the state of the world.

Florentine is a waitress in a restaurant in the back of a Five and Ten store in her neighborhood. She meets Jean Lévesque, a customer, and falls for him, although he is arrogant and aloof. She is desperate to escape from her life in poverty. Later she meets Emmanuel, a friend of Jean's, who loves her while she is still obsessed with Jean.

The story is beautifully written. In the first portion of the novel I was impatient with the slow pace and the introspection of the characters. As I became more involved in the pain and sadness and frustrations of the family members, I was pulled into the narrative.

This is a story of war and those who are affected, the Canadian home front, and the pain of poverty. There is so much more to this book than I can describe here, but not without revealing the later parts of the story, and I think each reader should discover all of it on their own.

I found the story depressing although I am sure not everyone would feel that way. Yet, I am very glad I read this book and I highly recommend it.

The Tin Flute was Gabrielle Roy's first novel. Nine more novels followed, published between 1950 and 1982.

Brian Busby of The Dusty Bookcase introduced me to this book, suggesting it two years ago for a World War II reading challenge. I did not get to it until this year. I am grateful that he mentioned it.


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Publisher:   McClellan & Stewart, 2009 (orig. pub. 1945)
Length:      400 pages
Format:      Trade paperback
Translated by:  Alan Brown
Setting:      Montreal, Canada, 1940
Genre:       Fiction, Classic
Source:     I purchased this book.

2019 World at War Reading Challenge

Today I am joining in on the World at War Reading Challenge, hosted by Becky's Book Reviews.

Duration: January - December 2019
Goal: Get at least one bingo! (more are welcome, of course!)
There are more rules and information at the signup post.  Sign up in the comments!

Here are some books I have already read this year that fit the challenge:

Turncoat by Aaron Elkins (fiction, World War II)
The Tin Flute by Gabrielle Roy
        (fiction, World War II, set in Canada)
Dead Wake by Erik Larson (nonfiction, World War I)

The categories:

_ Any book published 1914-1918
_ Any book published 1918-1924
_ Any book published 1925-1930
_ Any book published 1931-1938
_ Any book published 1939-1945
_ A nonfiction book about World War I
_ A nonfiction book about 1910s and 20s
_ A nonfiction book about 1920s and 30s
_ A nonfiction book about 1930s
_ A nonfiction book about World War II
_ A fiction book set during World War I
_ A fiction book set 1918-1924
_ A fiction book set in the 1920s
_ A fiction book set in the 1930s
_ A fiction book set during World War II
_ A book set in the United States or Canada
_ A book set in England, Ireland, or Scotland
_ A book set in Europe
_ A book set in Asia or Middle East
_ A book set elsewhere (a country/continent not already read for the challenge)
_ A book focused on "the war"
_ A book focused on "the homefront"
_ Watch any movie released in 1940s
_ Watch any movie released in the 1930s
_ Watch any movie about either war

Turncoat: Aaron Elkins

I have a shelf of books that I call the "three year" shelf. A book can sit on the shelf for three years and if I don't read it before then it goes (to the donation stack). I figure that for most of the books, I can give them the 50 page test before deciding to continue reading them or giving up on them. And in a few cases it has only taken a page or three to realize that I can pass the book on to someone else. This has been moderately successful.

Turncoat by Aaron Elkins was on this shelf, but as soon as I read a couple of pages from the book, I knew I was going to keep reading.  The story, the premise, and the writing grabbed me immediately. It is set in November 1963 and begins on the day John F. Kennedy died.

The book begins with this sentence:

"For everybody else in America it was the day JFK was killed in Dallas. For me it would always be the day Lily's father turned up on our doorstep."

The narrator is Peter Simon, currently a professor of history at Brooklyn college, formerly a waist gunner in a B-17 towards the end of World War II. Lily is his wife of 17 years, a counselor in a local high school. The unusual thing about his father-in-law turning up on his doorstep is that Peter had always thought that he had died during the war. Thus, Lily's father's sudden appearance and her refusal to talk to her father confuses him. Days later her father is dead, his savagely beaten body found in southern Brooklyn.

Both Peter and Lily have roots in France. Peter was born there but moved to the US at a young age with his parents. Lily lived in France until 1945, when she was 17 and met Peter in London towards the end of the war. They married and moved to the US. So when Lily disappears after the discovery of her father's body, Peter starts the search for her in Europe, first in Spain where her father had been living, then moving on to France and the town where Lily grew up.

For me the joy of reading this book was taking Peter's journey of discovery with him, thus I don't want to reveal more of the plot. I will say that the focus is on the French who collaborated with the Germans in World War II and the lasting effects that the German occupation had in France after the war.

This is a suspenseful story, cleverly told, and a page turner. New pieces of information about Lily and her father and their past are gradually revealed, in a realistic way. Peter Simon is resourceful and determined, although he finds it difficult to move outside of his comfort zone while hunting down the truth and his wife.

The story is very believable, partly because Peter knows enough French to get along well in France. We get to know him very well, and there are some great secondary characters. Two policemen are favorites of mine, one in New York (Detective Sergeant Ivan Kovalski of the 61st Precinct), one in Veaudry, France (Alphonse Juneaux of the Police Nationale's Provincial Department of Criminal Investigation).

In 2014 I read Loot (my review here), another book by Aaron Elkins about events related to World War II and its aftermath. That one is on a different subject, the looting of art treasures during the war. Elkins is better known for his series about Gideon Oliver, a forensic anthropologist whose nickname is "The Skeleton Detective".

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Publisher:  William Morrow, 2002.
Length:     298 pages
Format:     Hardcover
Setting:     New York, Spain, France
Genre:      Historical mystery
Source:     I purchased my copy.

The Polish Officer / Lumen

Two Novels set in Poland in World War II

In February of this year I read two novels set in Poland: The Polish Officer by Alan Furst, published in 1995, and Lumen by Ben Pastor, published in 1999. Both covered roughly the same time period, 1939 - 1941.

The Polish Officer

The Polish officer of the title is recruited into the Polish underground after Poland is invaded by
Germany in 1939.

This is the summary at Alan Furst's website:

September 1939. As Warsaw falls to Hitler’s Wehrmacht, Captain Alexander de Milja is recruited by the intelligence service of the Polish underground. His mission: to transport the national gold reserve to safety, hidden on a refugee train to Bucharest. Then, in the back alleys and black-market bistros of Paris, in the tenements of Warsaw, with partizan guerrillas in the frozen forests of the Ukraine, and at Calais Harbor during an attack by British bombers, de Milja fights in the war of the shadows in a world without rules, a world of danger, treachery, and betrayal.

As you can see from that description, a lot of the book takes place in other countries, and especially in France.

I was surprised by this book. It was drier than the first two books in the Night Soldiers series, and it felt more like a history than fiction. I liked the story but the characters did not grab me, not even the main character. Furst is very strong on research and the story feels very authentic.

Many fans of Alan Furst's books consider this their favorite, so I think I am in a minority in my opinion. It doesn't deter me from moving on to the next one in the series, though. I plan to read the whole series of historical espionage novels that he has written. (They are only loosely a series. There are some recurring characters and some books are connected, but most of them are stand alone stories.)

Lumen 

Immediately after reading The Polish Officer, I started reading Lumen. The books were a perfect pair. I learned a lot about Poland during the time period from Alan Furst's book, and that knowledge made this an easier and more interesting read.

The protagonist of Ben Pastor's novel is a Wehrmacht captain in Intelligence, Martin Bora, stationed in Cracow during the Nazi occupation of Poland. He is tasked with investigating the death of a nun. Father Malecki is in Cracow to investigate Mother Kazimierza's prophetic powers. He is ordered to stay and assist in the inquiry into her killing. Thus the two men must work together. The story is about solving the mystery of her death, but also is about much more, including the treatment of the citizens of Poland during the occupation. 

Reading a book set during World War II with a German officer as the protagonist is challenging. Bora has doubts about some of the atrocities carried out by other groups of soldiers, but he is committed to the Nazi cause. At times the story seems fragmented because of the focus moving from murder investigation to war time activities, but that is realistic. I was more interested in the picture of the times, seeing the activities from a different point of view, than I was in the mystery plot.

I will definitely take the opportunity to read the second book in this series, should I find a copy. I found it very good reading and I always like to read about the events of World War II. But this book stands alone pretty well.

Further reading on these books:

• At A Crime is Afoot, two posts talk about The Polish Officer and an overview of the Night Soldier series.
• At Goodreads, John Grant's review of Lumen.
• At The View from the Blue House, Rob Kitchin's review of Lumen
• Lumen reviewed at the Historical Society Website.

Their Finest: Lissa Evans

Back in 2015, this book was featured at the Clothes in Books blog. It took two years for me to read it and another year to give a full review. The original title of the book was Their Finest Hour and a Half. In later editions, the title was shortened to Their Finest after the film adaptation with that title was released in 2016.

The novel by Lissa Evans is set in the the UK in 1940 and 1941. The story is about a young female copywriter who gets an assignment to the Ministry of Information, writing parts of scripts for a WWII propaganda film. That alone would be an interesting subject, but the story follows several other people associated with the filming. Each one provides a different view of the UK during the war.

Within this story there are multiple storylines involving :

• Catrin, the female copywriter who is assigned to work on a film about the Dunkirk rescue mission.
• Edith Beadmore, a wardrobe assistant at Madame Tussaud's in London who also ends up working on the film.
• Lance Corporal Arthur Frith, appointed to be a Special Military Adviser to the film. His pre-war background in catering has not prepared him for the military or advising on a film.
• Ambrose Hilliard, a once prominent actor who has a small role in the film.

It is a lovely story, very humorous and moving. I read the book last summer, then we watched the film shortly after it was released on disc here. I still remember the impact it had on me.

My favorite character was Ambrose, so full of himself and oblivious to why he can no longer demand the starring roles, the meaty roles. I had a hard time liking him at first, but his story is very interesting and he grew on me. Catrin's story is the main plotline, but I was also very fond of the storyline following Edith's trials and tribulations. All of the secondary characters involved in the stories were handled well, so that each plotline was meaningful and important.

I liked that the story emphasizes the effects that World War II had on the people at home. In 1940, London was bombed repeatedly by German planes and the war effort looks to be going very poorly. This story is about the people who are not off fighting the war, but are in London enduring the chaos, discomfort, and heartbreak of the Blitz. It is not a comedy but it is told with humor and a light touch.

The author's writing is very readable; the events felt real and engaging. Her descriptions of people enduring the bombing of their homes and work places while sitting in Anderson shelters or basements put me right there while it was happening.

I enjoyed the movie but I liked the book more, for the usual reasons. A book can have more depth and provide more background on the characters and what shaped them. I was unhappy that the sub-plot of the seamstress was dropped. I do accept that the changes made in adapting the book were probably necessary and it still is quite entertaining (and moving). The main roles are played by  Gemma Arterton (Catrin), Sam Claflin (Tom Buckley, the screenwriter), and Bill Nighy (Ambrose). Bill Nighy is a favorite actor in our household and he did a fine job in the role.

See also:

• two reviews at goodreads, Palmyrah's and Bryan's
• and a film review at Den of Geek

-----------------------------

Publisher:  Harper Perennial, 2017 (orig. publ. 2009)
Length:      436 pages
Format:      Trade Paperback
Setting:      UK
Genre:       Historical Fiction
Source:      I purchased my copy.

Traitor's Purse: Margery Allingham

Albert Campion awakens in a hospital bed with amnesia; he doesn't know who he is but he knows he was on a very important assignment. He overhears a conversation between two policemen that indicates that he has killed someone, and he knows he must escape and search for the truth.

This was a reread but I remembered very little of the plot, and it was a very entertaining read. So far I consider this my favorite in the series, but then I haven't gotten to Tiger in the Smoke, which is the favorite of most Allingham fans.

I can understand why some people don't care for this book as much as other Campion mysteries. It is not a standard mystery, it focuses more on an unknown conspiracy than a murder (although it does have a murder), and the reader knows as little about what is going on as the protagonist. But all of those reasons are why I liked it so much, along with the presence of Lady Amanda Fitton, charming, capable and dependable, who we learn early on has been engaged to Campion but now wants to call it off.

One thing I can say for sure. If you want to try Margery Allingham's mysteries, don't start here. It is book 11 in the Albert Campion series, published in 1940, and it is entirely different from the others. More than one reviewer had a bad experience with this book and noted that it might be due to not reading any others first. Two other books that feature Amanda are Sweet Danger (#5) and The Fashion in Shrouds (#10).

I especially enjoy mystery novels set during World War II, and even more so when they were also written at the time. Knowing that this was written when no one knew the outcome and in a location where the threat was so imminent adds to the thrill.

Please see other reviews at Pining for the West, In so many words, Jandy's Reading Room, and Crime Time.

Also see the review from Tipping My Fedora. I will share a quote from that post:

More of a wartime spy thriller than a classic whodunit, this is a superb adventure and one that forever changed Albert Campion into a new kind of hero, one that we would however not encounter again until the war was over. Allingham was a great writer and this is one of her best books.

 -----------------------------

From Mr Campion's Lady, the Second Allingham Omnibus
Publisher:  Chatto and Windus, 1965 (this novel orig. pub. 1940). 
Length:     147 pages
Format:     Hardcover
Setting:     UK
Genre:      Mystery
Source:     Purchased at the Planned Parenthood book sale, 2005.

Blackout and All Clear by Connie Willis

There are four novels in Connie Willis's Oxford Time Travel series and all of them are very long books. After reading Doomsday Book in November 2017 and To Say Nothing of the Dog in December 2017, I put off the last two, Blackout and All Clear, until later in March. The two books are really one book in two parts so I did end up reading both of them together, between March 24th and April 6th. It was a wonderful read, very emotional at the end.

The story is centered on three time travelers. They are historians who have assignments to go back to specific events in World War II in the year 1940. The time and place they come from is Oxford, England in 2060.


Rather than focus on the story. I am going spend more time on the characters.

• Eileen O’Reilly (real name Merope Ward) works as a maid in a manor house in Backbury, Warwickshire. Her assignment is to observe children evacuated from London.
• Mike Davis (real name Michael Davies) is sent to Dover, to observe the evacuation of servicemen from Dunkirk. He has been implanted with an American accent for a trip he planned to Pearl Harbor but his assignment is switched, so he poses as an American reporter.
• Polly Sebastien (real name Polly Churchill) works as a shopgirl in London during the Blitz. She has been supplied with lists of places that were bombed during the Blitz over a specific period of time so that she can avoid those locations.

The story revolves around these three people and they eventually meet up in London. There are three other characters with smaller but important roles that I enjoyed:

• Colin Templer previously appeared as a young teenager in Oxford in Doomsday Book. At the time the book begins he is a bit older, 17, and has a crush on Polly. 
• Mr James Dunworthy, who is on the teaching staff of Balliol College, Oxford University, provides tutoring to the historians prior to their assignments, and appears in all of the books in the series. He is in charge of making the time travel assignments and has been moving them around for a reason that has not been shared with the historians or the reader. When things start going wrong, Mr Dunworthy decides to go to 1940 himself.
• Sir Godfrey Kingsman was not a time traveler but one of the "contemps," a person who belongs in the time that the historians are visiting. Sir Godfrey is a classically-trained Shakespearean actor who befriends Polly in an air raid shelter. They develop an attraction and affection for each other even though there is a very large age difference.

There are confusing elements: The historians have multiple assignments in the past, and in each trip to the past they have different names to fit in with the time period. Throughout the book we read about various time travelers and in some cases the real identity of the time traveler is not clear. This did not bother me, but it could be confusing and frustrating. I also think it was intentional, so I just went with the flow.

I liked All Clear better than Blackout, and it wasn't just because Blackout ends with a cliffhanger and there is a real ending to All Clear. In the first book there was too much repetition of and emphasis on the thought process of the historians, a quibble I also noted in my review of Doomsday Book. They worry all the time about the predicament that they are in AND they don't tell their fellow historians their concerns. It is like a soap opera. And both parts were too long. But I have no regrets about the two weeks I spent reading these books.

Those are my only criticisms of Blackout / All Clear and overall I loved the books. I think that the author does a great job with the characterizations. I was especially fond of the main characters but there are many, many small parts in these books and several of those minor characters still stick with me. I see Connie Willis's time travel series as re-readable and I am sure I will be doing that someday with these two books because of the picture of the UK during the Blitz. I will be able to slow down and savor them because I won't be worried about the fate of the characters.

The most important thing that I took away from this reading experience was its focus on the ordinary people in the UK during the war and the effect the war had on their country and their lives. I have always been interested in this time period, but I had no idea of the extent of the suffering and upheaval in the UK until I read two books by Juliet Gardiner, Wartime: Britain 1939-1945 and The Blitz. I was not a student of history and any history I learned came from the perspective of how the US fit into events. Whether the facts and the terminology are absolutely correct or not, you cannot miss the impact of World War II on the everyday life of people in the UK when reading Blackout and All Clear.

If you are interested in an overview of the mechanics of time travel in this novel, check out Alan J Chick's article on Connie Willis's “OXFORD TIME TRAVEL” SERIES.

See these links for more. Note that most of these reviews have quibbles but still like the book:

• Jo Walton at Tor.com
• Annalee Newitz at GIZMODO / io9
• Alex Baugh at The Children's War

 -----------------------------

Blackout
Publisher:   Bantam Books / Spectra, February 2010
Length:      512 pages 
Format:      Hardcover
Series:       Oxford Time Travel, #3
Setting:      England 
Genre:       Time Travel
Source:      Borrowed from my husband

All Clear

Publisher:   Bantam Books / Spectra, October 2010
Length:      656 pages 
Format:      Hardcover
Series:       Oxford Time Travel, #4
Setting:      England 
Genre:       Time Travel
Source:      Borrowed from my husband