Set in the second of world wars, following the trials of a London family through the poverty of war.
Great characters, the author takes the time to develop them well. Focussing on Ida, a steely sharp woman who cares for her family, has a lot of love for her family but doesn’t take any nonsense. Her husband Jeramiah, an Irish rogue with charm, physical strength but mental weakness. What an excellent couple, their fractured lives, not suffering through the war as much as through personal failures. The cover is a bit twee, the contrast of the Union flags with the Irish family, the ladies grin and bear it.
The research is good, bringing an authentic 1940s feel, tanners, rationing, scarcity of goods, talk of broken families. Proud men at war, disgraced man in jail, women surviving, striving, diving into air raid shelters. The polarised lives, bulldog spirit, the familiar days of the war, which none of us remember, not even my Dad.
This introduction is good, if you like books about struggling relationships during wartime then this a must read. End of review....
For me, these books about wartime seem to serve as a cultural reference point to what it is to be British, we all know what the war was like from the many sources, the books, films and historical records. But it’s a history that should not serve as a model for a better Britain, crime was higher, people really suffered, racism and antisemitism was rife. We should learn about these times particularly about what actually happened, ghettos, war crimes, murder, rather than a few individual fictional struggles with good old British grit. However, it’s not healthy to constantly think in the past, wearing rose tinted spectacles. We should not think of Germans as bad and British as good, this is not a reflection of modern times and I’m not sure how representative it was of the moral values of individuals during that era. We must learn to live, forget and move on, I’m not going to read this one.
Great characters, the author takes the time to develop them well. Focussing on Ida, a steely sharp woman who cares for her family, has a lot of love for her family but doesn’t take any nonsense. Her husband Jeramiah, an Irish rogue with charm, physical strength but mental weakness. What an excellent couple, their fractured lives, not suffering through the war as much as through personal failures. The cover is a bit twee, the contrast of the Union flags with the Irish family, the ladies grin and bear it.
The research is good, bringing an authentic 1940s feel, tanners, rationing, scarcity of goods, talk of broken families. Proud men at war, disgraced man in jail, women surviving, striving, diving into air raid shelters. The polarised lives, bulldog spirit, the familiar days of the war, which none of us remember, not even my Dad.
This introduction is good, if you like books about struggling relationships during wartime then this a must read. End of review....
For me, these books about wartime seem to serve as a cultural reference point to what it is to be British, we all know what the war was like from the many sources, the books, films and historical records. But it’s a history that should not serve as a model for a better Britain, crime was higher, people really suffered, racism and antisemitism was rife. We should learn about these times particularly about what actually happened, ghettos, war crimes, murder, rather than a few individual fictional struggles with good old British grit. However, it’s not healthy to constantly think in the past, wearing rose tinted spectacles. We should not think of Germans as bad and British as good, this is not a reflection of modern times and I’m not sure how representative it was of the moral values of individuals during that era. We must learn to live, forget and move on, I’m not going to read this one.