Tag: historical fiction

Approaching 80, frail and alone, a remarkable man makes the journey from his sheltered home in England to Berlin to meet his granddaughter. He has six days left to live and must relate his life story before he dies…

His life has been rich and full. He has witnessed firsthand the rise of the Nazis, experienced heartrending family tragedy, fought in the German army, been interred in a POW camp in Scotland and faced violent persecution in peacetime Britain. But he has also touched many lives, fallen deeply in love, raised a family and survived triumphantly at the limits of human endurance. He carries within him an astonishing family secret that he must share before he dies… a story that will mean someone else’s salvation.

Welcome to the moving, heart-warming and uncommon life of Alfred Warner.

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Juliet Conlin was born in London and grew up in England and Germany. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Lancaster University and a PhD in Psychology from the University of Durham. She works as a writer and translator and lives with her family in Berlin. Her novels include The Fractured Man (Cargo, 2013), The Uncommon Life of Alfred Warner in Six Days (Black & White, 2017), The Lives Before Us (Black & White, 2019).

My thoughts:

This was a sad and moving story, covering the life of Alfred Warner née Werner, recounted to a kind stranger turned friend as his grandaughter lies in a hospital bed.

Alfred’s life has been full of tragedy and hardship, but also love and kindness, from his early days as an orphan in Berlin, to a POW in Scotland, eventually becoming a British citizen and building a family with his wife.

The writing is warm and inviting, pulling you along with Alfred as he grows, into his present. He desperately wants to impart the family secret to his comatose granddaughter but is running out of time, but Julia, his new friend, provides the means to do so.

This is a lovely, life affirming read and worth spending six days with Alfred.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour but all opinions remain my own.

Life can change in a single moment…

Living under the watchful eye of her controlling and abusive father, Hannah Dawson’s hopes for freedom and happiness seem a distant dream. Her mother, passive and ashamed of her self-preservation, refuses to challenge her husband. It is the mysterious circumstances of her long-lost Aunt Lizzie’s disappearance in the 1920s that inspires Hannah to seek a better life.

Since escaping his family’s notoriety in Australia Will Kidd has spent a decade sailing the seas, never looking back. Content to live the life of a wanderer, everything changes in a single moment when he comes face to face with a ghost from his past on a cloudy beach in Liverpool.

Hannah and Will are thrown together by fate and bonded by secrets from long ago. Now, they discover a love like no other. But with Hannah’s father determined to see her wed to a man of his choosing they must fight against a tyrant who has ruined many lives. Even if they succeed, can they escape the chains of their histories? And will their plans for a future be possible when the whole world is changing forever…?

A compelling tale of family secrets and undeniable love against the odds, perfect for fans of Susanne Goldring and Fiona Valpy.

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Historical novelist Clare Flynn is a former global marketing director and business owner. She now lives in Eastbourne on the south coast of England and most of her time these days is spent writing her novels – when she’s not gazing out of her windows at the sea. Clare is the author of eight novels and a short story collection. Her books deal with displacement -her characters are wrenched away from their comfortable existences and forced to face new challenges – often in outposts of an empire which largely disappeared after WW2. Clare is an active member of the Historical Novel Society, the Romantic Novelists Association, The Society of Authors and the Alliance of Independent Authors.

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My thoughts:

I found this an enjoyable and interesting book, for various reasons. I used to work for an agency that supports merchant seafarers like Will so I was interested in the historical aspect of his job (my father-in-law was a captain in the merchant navy) and I enjoy history, especially when it’s as well researched as this.

I also really liked Hannah, she was a strong, intelligent woman with a huge heart who loves books, I think we would be friends.

Their disparate lives and tragedies bring them together in a surprising way and with the Second World War looming, there’s a lot to fight against, not just Hannah’s horrific, brutal, Bible misquoting, misogynist father.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour but all opinions remain my own.

Twenty-six-year-old Esme Munroe has finally left the Scottish Highlands for the excitement of London.

Working at a prestigious art gallery in Mayfair, she meets gorgeous, worldly Suki, who takes her to the most exclusive bars and clubs in the city.

But it’s easy to get lost in London’s glamour and chaos, especially when a long-hidden secret looms – will Esme discover it and who she can really trust, before it’s too late?

My thoughts:

This was a modern take on the sort of novels Jilly Cooper and Jackie Collins are famous for – posh girl making her way in the world, complete with parties, Society types and sex.

Esme is a bit naive and needs to grow a thicker skin to make it in the 80s London art world.

She’s landed a job and a temporary home courtesy of her sister’s godfather, an art dealer who lives with his flamboyant partner is Kensington.

Making friends as an adult is hard, and Esme struggles to find her place and her tribe.

Susannah Constantine (of Trinny & fame) is an enjoyable writer and knows her world of privilege and picking a few things up in Harrods well.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour but all opinions remain my own.

The Second World War is over. England is losing its empire, world status and old elite values. The Empire strikes back with mass immigration, while the government soothes its people with welfare, the NHS, televisions and refrigerators.

At the centre of the novel is the contemptuous Joan Kite, at odds with all the changes imposed on the country in the post war period. Shut up in a house with her only daughter, she refuses to compromise and adapt, pouring vitriol on anyone who seeks to enter their lives.

After years of frugality, patriotism, service and excitement, she is angry at the contracted existence she’s been delivered and at the manner in which her aspirations to upper-middle-class culture have been thwarted. When her daughter is threatened, she begins a diary to investigate her past before and during the war. In it she gives rein to a flamboyant imaginary life and to an energetic loathing for the reality of a diminished England.

During the freak hot summer of 1976, as water is rationed and ladybirds invade their home, the intimacy of mother and daughter intensifies. Their lives unravel within the claustrophobia of their semi-detached house behind closed velvet curtains.

Janet Todd (Jane Austen’s Sanditon, Radiation Diaries, Aphra Behn: A Secret Life, A Man of Genius), novelist, biographer and internationally renowned scholar, is the General Editor of The Cambridge Works of Jane Austen, author of The Cambridge Introduction to Jane Austen, and a former president of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge.

Now a full-time writer and literary critic, she is an Emerita Professor at the University of Aberdeen and an Honorary Fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge. Born in Wales, she grew up in Britain, Bermuda and Ceylon/Sri Lanka and has worked at universities in Ghana, Puerto Rico, India, the US (Douglass College, Rutgers, Florida) Scotland (Glasgow, Aberdeen) and England (Cambridge, UEA). She lives in Cambridge, England and Venice, Italy.

My thoughts:

Written as a diary kept by an angry, resentful Joan in the 1970s, recounting her life, from a repressive inter-war childhood to a lonely Second World War as a single mother struggling with rationing and isolation.

Her fraught relationship with daughter Maud is central to her life, as she tries to ensure that Maud has a better life than she did.

As Maud starts to unravel and Joan becomes concerned, her diaries track the deterioration of her daughter.

Well written, engaging, and opening a window into the lives of women in post-war period.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour but all opinions remain my own.