Historical: April 2006 Archives

For Susanna and Will these challenges are doubly difficult to bear. She is in Shropshire and he is in London, it is 1665 and there is no National Express coach to bring them together.

To make matters worse just as they were about to be joined reunited and married the plague breaks out in London, trapping Will in the festering, sickening city.

And like all young couples, the affairs of love are never smooth, a misunderstanding when they finally meet threatens the whole relationship.

If these were the only challenges this young couple had to face then Ann Turnbull’s follow-up to the Whitbread-shortlisted No Shame, No Fear would still be a tale and a half.

However, there’s a further level of complexity. Susanna and Will are Quakers – dissenters from religious orthodoxy, a vulnerable position in the febrile climate of the mid-Seventeenth century.

Forged in the Fire is rich with details about the sufferings of the Quakers. Will spends time in Newgate prison, a group of Quakers face transportation to the West Indies while on-going persecution is an everyday fact of life.

The climax of the tale coincides with the Great Fire of London and the risk that everything Will and Susanna have worked for will be destroyed.

This is a compelling story of life in uncertain times and an excellent portrayal of life in a minority community for readers aged 12 and over.

It is the paradoxical sense of knowledge and yet of malignant uncertainty that Alison Prince has captured so well in “Doodlebug Summer”. Set in Blitz-ravaged London environs in 1944, this deceptively complex, short novel pulls together narrative threads that provide an astute look at familial concern, the resultant impact of advancements in technological warfare upon civilians and a sensitive portrayal of the horrors imbued within themechanics of conflict rather than the villification of a set of people, or of an abject construct of ‘nationhood’ wholesale.

“...the great, glossy concert grand pianos are made in Germany, the country we are fighting. There must be people there who like us, sick of the war.”

There’s a beautiful fullness in the symmetry between the opening and close of this novel as Katie and her friend Pauline climb their tree. The tree itself is grounded in the presents with far-reaching roots... from the boughs of the tree is a standpoint with an enviable panorama into the future.

“Flash Backs”, the series within which “Doodlebug Summer” sits is a collection of historical novels published by A & C Black with the aim of expounding key historical moments through strong short pacy reads. Useful historical notes are provided towards the rear of the novel, as too is a glossary of more speciailised areas of diction used in telling the story.