Tag: life in the London Blitz

The Air Raid Book Club by Annie Lyons – A moving novel of lives, books and reading in a challenging time

May 27, 2024

The Air Raid Book Club by Annie Lyons

It is not often that I found myself so deeply moved by a novel, but this well written book evoked that sort of response. It takes as its theme that reading and books, if possible in the company of others, can improve and even change lives, and in the context of this book it is vital. The book opens in 1938 and proceeds through a war that separates families and friends and causes danger and death. The air raids of the title are the London Blitz which means for the first-time fighting is brought home to people on the Home Front. The main character, Gertie Bingham, is still trying to come to terms with the death of her beloved husband Harry some two years before, but as much as Lyons describes her devastation, the book is not a wallow in her sadness. Her ownership of a bookshop and the support of a very special teenager and friends means that Binghams’ bookshop will play a part in a very tough time and be the focus for many people. While this is the aspect of the book that first attracted me, I found the descriptions of Gertie and her progress the most effective. This is a book about the power of books to draw people together when they become the focus of joint reading and discussion, a way of escaping difficult circumstances. It is also an honest account of the difficulties of a refugee girl and how she longs for her family, as well as an encouraging story of how almost a new family gathers around her in the most extreme of circumstances.

At the start of the novel in London, 1938, Gertie is still felling the sadness of losing Harry, and is struggling to maintain interest in her successful bookshop. She is assisted by the invaluable young Betty, but other people who help with the shop and the attached Book Club are proving more difficult. She is also still missing her parents and beloved brother Jack, who was killed in the First World War. She still has her redoubtable Uncle Thomas, a renowned and kindly, if slightly eccentric bookseller, who supports her. Her friend Charlie, a loyal friend of Harry, still appears in her life, and it is through his charitable work that she is persuaded to accept a Jewish child who is already at risk in Germany from the growing Nazi persecution. As she is sad that she was not able to have a child herself during her marriage, she is torn, especially when she discovers that Hedy is fifteen and deeply troubled, and it is not easy to establish a relationship despite her best efforts. As War comes closer, Gertie, Hedy, Betty and others discover that this is going to be a very different conflict from the all too recent previous War, and that while men will still be called away, there will be danger in London itself.

An element of this book that I particularly enjoyed is the book titles that are being sought out and relished in such difficult circumstances. While “Gone with the Wind” is perhaps better known as a film today, the book then was a particular favourite. P.G Wodehouse’s humour and subtle political parodies are popular, as well as Du Maurier’s “Rebecca” as distractions from the challenges of daily life.

Lyons has brought to life people in fascinating time in the twentieth century, and laced the effective story with honesty and real feeling. I found this book an excellent read and recommend it to book lovers as well as those who enjoy a well written wartime story.

The Midnight News by Jo Baker – a novel of a young woman in upheaval in 1940 and the London Blitz

September 6, 2023

The Midnight News by Jo Baker

This is a powerful and intense novel set in the London Blitz of the Second World War. It is enthralling, atmospheric and a little disturbing. It is narrated mainly through the point of view of Charlotte Richmond, a twenty-year-old woman with a disturbed past in 1940, when she has made a break for relative freedom in a city that is rapidly becoming accustomed to nightly bombing which is a total upheaval for many of the people left, a profound upheaval mirrored in the mind of Charlotte. As a reader I found this an unsettling, brilliantly written book, which often made me stop and admire the power of the writing.

Early in the novel the first raid is likened to an unexpected sound on the streets of London. “She can also hear a waterfall, and there are no waterfalls round here.” Charlotte does not tell her own story, but it follows her progress, her confusion and bafflement of what is happening. It explores the nature of friendship, of life experience, of contrasting family situations. Charlotte’s silent thoughts, of how despite a relatively wealthy background she is forced to count out her money that she earns for “essential war work”, is revealing of how she really lives. She finds a welcome in a boarding house, in sharp contrast to a background she has rejected, which may have rejected her. When a tragedy rocks her life, when she finds her whole view of life upset by how what is happening to everyone seems particularly awful for her, she feels threatened on every front. Her thoughts become dominated by her friends in several ways, even her remarkable godmother seems unusually preoccupied. Her typing job seems pointless, despite her being told that every piece of information is vital.

In a London being reformed on a nightly basis, where nothing is certain, Charlotte becomes convinced that she is being watched, pursued from and by a shadow man. Terrified of what is happening around her, to her, she makes decisions, attempts to make connections, but is left distressed. The only hope seems to be with a young man who she sees feeding the birds, a habit which is frowned on in a time of increasing food shortages. Tom’s gentle, non-threatening actions provide an alternative for Charlotte as she desperately seeks to silence the voices, the disturbance she feels. Tom is the only other character given his own story in the book; hesitant but supported by his family, challenged in many ways, permanently wondering.

This is a novel that twists and turns, with surprises at every turn, with challenges for every character, with real pain on many levels. It contains so many ideas, of the nature of family, of friends, of the truth in a time of upheaval in so many ways. For me it had echoes of Sarah Waters’ “Nightwatch”, where expectations are overturned, where desperate young women try to exist in a world completely changed overnight. This is a painfully honest book, with a strong inner dynamic of a disturbed and disturbing character and surprising twists and turns throughout. I really recommend it as an enthralling and significant novel of women’s experiences of the Second World War in all the messiness and unpredictability.