I picked this book up at an op shop somewhere, with no memory of where. There are challenges to reading this book, it’s set in England during WWII. Thompson doesn’t pull any punches and she shows us exactly how things were at that time and place. She doesn’t skirt around the bombs, but shows us enough details, we get everything except some of the smells. If you have issues with things like this then this is not the book for you.
Having said that, this book is based on a real library that was bombed and then relocated to Bethnal Green Underground Station, an unfinished stop on the Central Line, 78 feet underground. Many inhabitants from the area moved into the station. If you have the paperback you can see a photo in the appendices of the triplet metal bunks that were used. I think they slept 5,000 people and the bunks seem to have been labeled so that you could easily find your family or friends by knowing their bunk number.
This book doesn’t pull any punches. We are shown quite graphically how some people died in London. I’ve read many war books and seen how people died as soldiers, but this is probably the most graphic one I’ve read that has not been set on the front.
I only made two notes throughout the entire book. 433 pages (and 45 pages of appendices or author’s notes) and only two notes. I didn’t want to interrupt the flow by stopping to write notes. I was captivated. I could say that many times in many different ways, but the end result is the same. This would make a great book club book…for those who can take the really hard war stories.
One of the notes was about jigsaws. Not the jigsaw puzzles that you do to pass time, but how there were so many people dead or missing that life was a jigsaw. Children were adopted by those not at all related to them, men and women married again because their first spouse was gone. People were looking for connections and stability. Both of these have often been found in marriage and family and that’s what people tried to remake using odd pieces of the jigsaw, or odd people who happened to still be there at the end.
Yes, there’s romance. Yes, I skipped those pages. I was desperate to find out who survived and how they survived that I just skipped the romance rather than putting the book down. Because, apart from the little bits of romance this is a really good book. It tore at my heart strings and made me cry. It educated me on how people survived and how they started to put themselves back together after the war was finished. What would be interesting would be to read books about the opposite side. How people in Germany, France or other countries in Europe survived. I’ve read much about Jews in Europe, but not about non-Jews.
I found this eminently readable. Probably not a good thing when I’m trying to get some sleep. The pages just kept turning despite the graphic imagery. I’m sure this book informed some of my dreams during the week I read this. I’m often grateful that I don’t remember my dreams, as the imagery in this book is graphic enough that I don’t need my dreams as well. One of the more graphic passages is based on a true story, and we find how hard it is to deal with an event such as this by looking through Ruby’s eyes and her brain. This fully illustrates why people drink a lot during and after bad events, it’s a way of blotting out the memories.
If you can handle yet another war book then this is a novel I highly recommend.
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