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| Michael Cronin | |
| Oxford University Press | |
| 1904442714 | |
| Nov 2005 | |
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Adult books have often addressed the issue of how the history of the Second World War could have been very different. Robert Harris’s Fatherland is a classic of the genre while Philip Roth’s more recent The Plot Against America gives a US perspective.
| Michael Cronin has used this idea in Against The Day, Through The Night and now the final part of the trilogy In The Morning. His premise is that Britain was invaded in 1940 and the new book follows Frank and Leslie’s battle for survival in the dying days of the regime. Thanks to American and Soviet success on the continent, the occupiers are being forced to withdraw. The pair are now experienced guerrilla fighters and the book recounts their attempts to hamper German efforts to depart quickly and efficiently. Along the way they meet a cracking cast of secondary characters including a double-crossing actor, collaborating policemen and British Nazis. At the heart of the book is the story of the resistance’s attempt to stop the German commander Gauleiter Müller escaping to Germany. The climax comes with Frank held captive by the Careys, a family of rich British Nazis, in Wiltshire and Leslie working with a local guerrilla group who are trying to foil the commander's plans. Having not read the first two books in the trilogy some of what follows may be unfair. However, In The Morning is being promoted as a standalone novel as well as the concluding part of the story so it’s fair to point out that it feels to this reader as if there are too many loose ends being tied, marring an otherwise enjoyable plot. The plus points are a succession of fast-paced events that start immediately on Page 1 when partisans blow up a train. If you’ve read the first two books you’ll probably race through it. If not, it might be best to start at the beginning.
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War: November 2005 Archives
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| Mal Peet |
| Walker |
| 0744565707 |
| Oct 2005 |
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I've just done that thing you do when you turn the last page on an exceptionally good book. Close the back cover, stare gormlessly at the jacket illustration and make a cross between a sniff and a sigh. The sniff for appreciation of great work done, the sigh of regret that a story you've savoured has finished.
Mal Peet's first novel, Keeper, was a miracle. A novel that finally revealed to me - a cricket lover - the poetry and magic in the game of soccer. Second novels are often disappointments, and when the author himself told me (at a summer party) that he was working on a novel set in Holland during the war, I confess I felt disappointment was on the cards. How wrong. This is an outstanding novel. Outstanding in every regard. It establishes Peet as a novelist of immense gift and versatility, for no two novels could be more different than Keeper and Tamar and yet be so equally brilliant. The two principal characters in Tamar are undercover operators working in Nazi-occupied Holland in support of the resistance. There is many an episode of nailbiting excitement in the book, but for much of the time the undercover agents have to cope with the boredom of waiting and watching, and with the interpersonal tension of loving the same woman. Parallel to this is a more contemporary narrative, set in 1995, which is properly subservient to the war story, and yet utterly convincing. Throughout the book the writing is of the highest order, crisply figurative description falling from Peet's pen with apparent ease: "the mud had solidified into frost-capped peaks and ripples that looked like mountain ranges seen from the cockpit of an aircraft" or "the sky was the colour on old knife" to give just two examples. Published by Walker Books as a Young Adult novel, Tamar is a novel worthy of standing with the very best of contemporary British fiction.
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