• About Me
  • Contact Me
  • Policies
  • Welcome

Novelhistorian

~ What's new and old in historical fiction

Novelhistorian

Tag Archives: loss

In Memoriam: Helen Dunmore

16 Friday Jun 2017

Posted by Novelhistorian in Reviews and Columns

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

character-driven, Exposed, Helen Dunmore, loss, novelist, obituary, tension, The Betrayal, The Lie, The Siege

I read in the New York Times this morning that Helen Dunmore, poet and historical novelist, died on June 5, in Bristol, England. Even though I never met her, I feel sad and bereft, because her voice was one that always moved me. Her novel The Lie was the first book I reviewed on this blog, more than two-and-a-half years ago, and I can’t say I’ve read a more powerful one since. When Dunmore wrote about loss, as she did in that novel, she did so with breathtaking honesty, pulling no punches, sparing nothing and no one. Yet throughout, it’s empathy that comes through most clearly, which is why I can’t put her books down, despite how much they terrify me.

Speaking of terror, I’ve read three of her thrillers, and they’re marvelous. The Siege deals with the German attack on Leningrad during the Second World War, a subject that, by the way, has received plenty of fictional attention. A sort-of sequel, The Betrayal, centers on the so-called Doctors’ Plot, Stalin’s last purge before he died. And Exposed, reviewed here, reinvents the Soviet spy ring that infiltrated British Intelligence during the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Helen Dunmore has influenced me as a writer, even though her choice of subject matter and characters differ from mine. I admire her economy, her directness, her lucid prose that never lets beautiful sentences get in the way, and how she can make ordinary moments extraordinary. Most of all, she renders those ordinary moments so that she needs no Very Significant plot points to generate tension, for character drives her gripping narratives, first, last, and always.

I will miss her, and from six thousand anonymous miles away, I offer my condolences to her friends and family. Literature is the poorer for her death.

Will the Walking Wounded Speak Up?: The Railwayman’s Wife

18 Monday Apr 2016

Posted by Novelhistorian in Reviews and Columns

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Ashley Hay, Australia, historical fiction, literary fiction, loss, poetry, railways, romance, small-town mores, twentieth century, World War II, writer's block

Review: The Railwayman’s Wife, by Ashley Hay
Atria, 2013. 269 pp. $26

One moment, you’re feeling confident, happy, because you believe that you’ve preserved the most precious part of life. The next moment, your security has vanished; how do you cope?

That’s the question behind this gorgeously written, deceptively gentle novel about loss. World War II has hardly ended, and Anneke Lachlan lives with her husband, Mac, and their ten-year-old daughter, Isabel, in an Australian coastal village. They’re the sort of people you’d love to know–thoughtful, passionate, delighting in beauty. They have little money, but their only regret on that score is not being able to visit Mac’s birthplace in Scotland, a trip they’ve both yearned to make. Nevertheless, they delight in fashioning or finding gifts for one another that offer new experiences or ways of seeing things.

Three Australian soldiers, all winners of the Victoria Cross, 1946 (Courtesy Australian War Memorial; public domain).

These three Australian soldiers all won the Victoria Cross and were lucky enough to live to tell about it (1946, courtesy Australian War Memorial; public domain).

But behind that warmth lurks the terrible suffering of the war, whose survivors are conscious that many people didn’t make it. Anneke, known as Ani, is glad her husband kept his job with the railroad rather than enlist. But in the back of her mind, she still worries sometimes, vaguely, that chance will take Mac from her yet. And that’s what happens; a railway accident claims his life, and the pain overwhelms her.

How Ani faces her loss–or not–makes a touching, subtle narrative, of small moments carefully rendered that reveal her character, her place in the village, how people look out for her, and what they expect. She takes a part-time job in the tiny local library and tries to find solace in books. Nor is she the only one to suffer. Frank Draper, a doctor who served in the war, can’t forget the liberated concentration camp inmates whose lives he couldn’t save. He returns to his native village irritable, cynical, and morose, taking up a medical practice but unsure whether he’ll stay.

His boyhood friend Roy McKinnon, a poet who also saw wartime action and won fame for a single poem about it, has come back also, so shaken that he can’t write. He lives with his lonely, difficult sister, Iris, who loved Frank Draper before the war and still hopes to marry him. Roy takes a fancy to Ani, first as a muse, as he struggles to find words worth putting on a page, and then more deeply. But will any of these people have the emotional resilience to break out of the hardened defenses they’ve built for themselves? There are still words they can never say (or write), because they seem risky or paltry or ridiculous next to how they’ve been hurt, or too challenging for the myths they’ve woven to comfort themselves.

A lesser authorial hand might have surrendered to the temptation to dip these familiar themes and situations in treacle and serve up an easier story. Not here. Hay has taken the high road, climbing a good, long way to do so. With one exception, nobody makes life simple for themselves or anyone else, whatever kindness or generosity they may have, and they often refuse to see what’s plainly before them. That makes them utterly believable. And as I suggested above, the prose doesn’t hurt, either:

It’s a still and sunny day, the water flat and inky, the escarpment colored golden and orange, pink and brown. As the train takes the curves and bends of its line, the mountain’s rock faces become great stone monoliths that might have come from Easter Island, and then the geometric edges of some desert temple. Here are the hellish-red gashes of coke ovens; here is the thin space where there’s only room, it seems, for a narrow road, a narrow track, between the demands of sea and stone.

Hay strikes two false notes, however, in her characterizations. Isabel, Ani’s daughter, is the exception to the high road, the only person not to subvert herself. She’s impossibly adorable, empathic and perceptive beyond her years, a child you’d gladly bring home and raise as your own. Unfortunately, I don’t believe she exists. Not once does she act out, throw a tantrum, complain, or even shout or scream–and this is a girl who just lost the father she worshiped. Not only that, when Ani raises her voice to her–all two instances of it–the mother feels like a criminal, which feels too perfect.

At the other extreme, Frank Draper becomes more human, though it’s not clear how. He’s not the sort to talk about what he saw or his feelings, so I want to see how Iris expects to cozy up to him. But Hay doesn’t show this. Are we meant to assume that Iris believes her interest in Frank will melt his icy exterior? I’d need to see that happen before I agree with her.

All the same, The Railwayman’s Wife is a beautiful novel.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

Recent Posts

  • Music, Death, Grief: The Great Passion
  • The Pain Will Get Better: After Lives
  • The Commission for Relief in Belgium
  • Sold!: The Shinnery
  • Magic in Manhattan: The Golem and the Jinni

Recent Comments

Craig Baker on The Luckiest Man in Russia: A…
His Last Duchess: Th… on The Shakespeares, at Home:…
Year of the Thriller… on An Island of Women: Matri…
Year of the Thriller… on Royal Assassin: M, King’s…
Year of the Thriller… on Deception’s Toll: An Unlikely…

Archives

  • January 2023
  • December 2022
  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • September 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014

Categories

  • Comment
  • Reviews and Columns
  • Uncategorized

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Blogs I Follow

  • Roxana Arama
  • Damyanti Biswas
  • madame bibi lophile recommends
  • History Imagined: For Readers, Writers, & Lovers of Historical Fiction
  • Suzy Henderson
  • Flashlight Commentary
  • Diary of an Eccentric

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 175 other subscribers
Follow Novelhistorian on WordPress.com

Recent Posts

  • Music, Death, Grief: The Great Passion
  • The Pain Will Get Better: After Lives
  • The Commission for Relief in Belgium
  • Sold!: The Shinnery
  • Magic in Manhattan: The Golem and the Jinni

Recent Comments

Craig Baker on The Luckiest Man in Russia: A…
His Last Duchess: Th… on The Shakespeares, at Home:…
Year of the Thriller… on An Island of Women: Matri…
Year of the Thriller… on Royal Assassin: M, King’s…
Year of the Thriller… on Deception’s Toll: An Unlikely…

Archives

  • January 2023
  • December 2022
  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • September 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014

Contents

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Blog at WordPress.com.

Roxana Arama

storyteller from a foreign land

Damyanti Biswas

For lovers of reading, crime writing, crime fiction

madame bibi lophile recommends

Reading: it's personal

History Imagined: For Readers, Writers, & Lovers of Historical Fiction

Suzy Henderson

What's new and old in historical fiction

Flashlight Commentary

What's new and old in historical fiction

Diary of an Eccentric

writings of an eccentric bookworm

  • Follow Following
    • Novelhistorian
    • Join 175 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Novelhistorian
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...