• About Me
  • Contact Me
  • Policies
  • Welcome

Novelhistorian

~ What's new and old in historical fiction

Novelhistorian

Tag Archives: scams

A Very Odd Couple: Crooked Hearts

24 Monday Aug 2015

Posted by Novelhistorian in Reviews and Columns

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

1940, absurd, Blitz, children, Churchill, England, historical fiction, Lissa Evans, London, satire, scams, World War II

Review: Crooked Hearts, by Lissa Evans
HarperCollins, 2015. 282 pp. $25

Vera Sedge’s life is a painfully funny mess. It’s 1940, and London’s getting pounded by the Blitz, but to her, that’s not the worst; the war seems just “out there” someplace. Rather, Vee, as she’s called, runs herself ragged caring for her lazy, selfish nineteen-year-old son, excused from military service because of a heart murmur and running around somewhere, doing things he refuses to talk about. Her dotty mother, also living with them in a northwest suburb, expects to be waited on too, while she writes long, chatty letters to Mr. Chamberlain (and then Mr. Churchill) to complain, in a pen-pally way, about shortages and shoddy goods and refugees who must certainly be spies.

A London house bombed in 1940 (Courtesy Imperial War Museum, public domain).

A London house bombed in 1940 (Courtesy Imperial War Museum, public domain).

Vee would dearly love to latch onto a paying scam; it’s the only way she knows how to earn her meager living. But as a con artist, she’s inept, partly because she rushes headlong into whatever looks good right that second, only to find that the string of lies she’s told don’t hold water, and she’s trapped. She tries passing herself off as a door-to-door fund raiser for the wartime charity du jour but earns more suspicion than income.

Meanwhile, Noel Bostock, a brainy ten-year-old with no friends or social skills (“hobbies are for people who don’t read books”), lives with his demented godmother, Mattie. His tender love for her is all he has in the world, and when she wanders out one night and dies of exposure, Noel’s bereft and alone. The law says that, like all other children living near bombing targets, he should have been evacuated. But, as resistance is his godmother’s legacy–in her heyday, she fought for woman suffrage, chaining herself to fences and serving a prison term–legal authority means nothing to him.

Vee takes Noel in, thinking to pocket the government allowance for harboring an evacuee child, and her first impression is that he’s simple and pliable. Wrong. What she’s found is a partner in crime–a senior partner, the brains behind the operation. Noel, ever organized, quickly figures out which charity they should target, in which neighborhoods, using whatever script he’s concocted for her. Immediately, their efforts bear fruit.

I have to admit, I felt uncomfortable reading about this dynamic duo bilking credulous, good-hearted folk for money that would never reach the widows, orphans, or wounded soldiers it was meant for. Granted, judged against the venal behavior they see around them, they’re small fry. In Evans’s world, nobody has time to be a hero, because being on the take requires every spare minute. If this is England’s finest hour, as Churchill proclaimed, you have to wonder what the brave, doomed pilots in the RAF were fighting for. (Vee, of course, evokes the Churchillian two-finger salute for victory.) Crooked Hearts is a sendup on a small, yet potent scale, a wartime theater of the absurd.

But when there’s no time for heroism, that leaves love, which takes no extra effort or splendid opportunities. You get the sense that Vee and Noel will somehow soften each other’s carefully sheltered heart, and it’s worth finding out how. There’s a dollop of comeuppance for those who really need it, which is satisfying too.

I loved the humor in Crooked Hearts–the letters to the prime minister, the ridiculous scrapes Vee gets into, the ten-year-old who talks over his guardian’s head, the satire on British attitudes. Most of the characters are merely that, a collection of attitudes. But the novel works because Vee and Noel are fragile humans whose desires have been thwarted so long–as in forever–they can’t even name them. Theirs is a fine tale.
Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

Recent Posts

  • Good, Evil, and Hope: Deacon King Kong
  • The Marsh Girl: Where the Crawdads Sing
  • No Quarter: Wolves of Eden
  • Heresies: The King at the Edge of the World
  • Orwell’s Vision: The Last Man in Europe

Recent Comments

2020 – A Year… on Missing, Presumed: The Poppy…
Novelhistorian on Hard Life Lessons: Domini…
Mila on Hard Life Lessons: Domini…
Novelhistorian on Tormented Souls: The White Fea…
Juxtabook on Tormented Souls: The White Fea…

Archives

  • 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

  • Rewriting History
  • Damyanti Biswas
  • madame bibi lophile recommends
  • 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 153 other followers

Follow Novelhistorian on WordPress.com

Recent Posts

  • Good, Evil, and Hope: Deacon King Kong
  • The Marsh Girl: Where the Crawdads Sing
  • No Quarter: Wolves of Eden
  • Heresies: The King at the Edge of the World
  • Orwell’s Vision: The Last Man in Europe

Recent Comments

2020 – A Year… on Missing, Presumed: The Poppy…
Novelhistorian on Hard Life Lessons: Domini…
Mila on Hard Life Lessons: Domini…
Novelhistorian on Tormented Souls: The White Fea…
Juxtabook on Tormented Souls: The White Fea…

Archives

  • 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.

Rewriting History

How writers turn history into story, and story into history

Damyanti Biswas

For lovers of reading, writing, travel, humanity

madame bibi lophile recommends

Reading: it's personal

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

Cancel