The Home Front Girls by Susanna Bavin
This book is the first one in a brilliant new series focusing on women dealing with life in Manchester and the surrounding districts during the Second World War. As with Susanna’s other novels, she has got into the characters’ thinking straight away – the two main characters are quickly established and are consistent throughout. Both Sally White and Betty Hughes are young women facing challenges in their families and friends, as well as the whole situation of a country at war when its effects are deeply felt everywhere. Their war work, as well as their night shifts, are challenging, but Susanna has got right to the heart of both tasks, with some excellent research which is never allowed to slow the story down. A Food Office, a scrap yard and watching for incendiaries are shown in all their reality at the time, with the day-to-day concerns and challenges. The women’s families are also well developed, including a difficult stepmother and loving parents who struggle to do their best. As always, the subsidiary characters in the novels have real voices and identities even if they only play small parts in the plot. There is real depth to the story, emotional and factual, and I am very pleased to have had the opportunity to read and review it.
The beginning of the novel shows Sally doing a Food Test as part of her job in the Food Office. There is a good description of the streets on which the small grocery shop is situated, and the sort of customers that it usually attracts, one even sporting a tin hat as a concession to the recent bombing for the first time in the area. Even more powerful is the description of how Sally must trap the assistant, as her honest and kind nature means that she is discomforted by another’s difficulty. Even more worrying is the assumptions that everyone, including her best friend Deborah, is making about her relationship with Rod. As an only child of older parents, she has close to Deborah and Rod’s family for a lifetime, but that does not mean that she feels totally comfortable with the possessive local hero. A chance meeting with the quiet and undemanding Andrew confuses her, and soon her life changes in every way, with even the love of her life seemingly having secrets. Her move to work at a salvage yard seems a huge change from an office job, especially when she has to work for and with some people with their own issues.
Betty is soon deeply upset by a mistake which changes her life. As her difficult stepmother forces her to move on, she finds herself in a new home with some lively characters and working at a salvage yard with a whole new set of challenges. She too faces problems in those she is to work with, but a shared danger may well bring them together as Betty must face up to more complicated issues.
This is such a well written novel by a talented and experienced writer of novels set in this fascinating period. I enjoyed the references to some of her other novels in a memorable place and character. This is a very engaging read which has just had a sequel published, and I recommend this novel to everyone who enjoys reading about this time when women really had to take the lead on the Home Front.
Northern Reader 