Every night was serious: you crouched in the dark and the engines stuttered overhead, and then along came morning, and you were still alive, and once you’d got over that surprise you prepared the breakfast and accidentally dropped the only egg on the floor, and for a moment or two that was serious ... [loc. 1680]
I enjoyed the recent movie version (review here) and bought the novel: have just got around to reading it, in my mini-season of Crisis Novels, and found it a pleasant read. Lissa Evans' story is light-hearted, comic and romantic, without trivialising or romanticising the Blitz, the Dunkirk evacuation or the sheer misery of wartime life.
Catrin Cole comes from Wales, shows a talent for dialogue in her advertising work, and is recruited by the Ministry of Information during World War II. Together with her laconic colleague Tom Buckley, she produces the script for a propaganda film loosely -- very loosely -- based on two sisters who took part in the Dunkirk evacuation. As counterpart to Catrin's story, ageing star Ambrose Hilliard has to adjust his expectations and work with (ugh) amateurs.
There's a sub-plot in the book that was omitted from the film version: the romance between Arthur, a soldier who was evacuated from Dunkirk (brought in to consult on the film), and Edith, a spinster who worked at Madame Tussauds, fled to the countryside after a bomb destroyed 'her' gallery, and is conscripted to age costumes. Their story is innocent and touching, and it highlights an aspect of the novel that's absent in the film. Many of the characters' lives have been affected by the First World War: Ambrose repeatedly recalls the trenches, Arthur nursed his badly-wounded father for years. Less than 25 years separated the two wars. Think back to 1997 ...
There's more room for characterisation in a novel than in a film, and this novel didn't disappoint in that regard -- though I would have liked a bit more about Ellis, Catrin's feckless artist husband. There are also a lot of little details that bring the period to life: train delays due to bombs on the line, fund-raising for the War Effort, the difficulty of feeding and protecting a dog, the loitering soldiers and the protective sandbags and the war art in the National Gallery. The long forms a bombed-out householder would fill in, to get compensation when the war was over.
A good read: I'll look out for more by Lissa Evans.
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