A love triangle built on lies
HISTORICAL EITHNE FARRY WHEN WE FALL by Carolyn Kirby (No Exit Press €16)
THICK fog, a Tiger Moth plane and an emergency landing provide the gripping opening to a terrific Second World War novel, which deals with complicated matters of love and loyalty when lives are at stake and choices are bleak.
Vee Katchatourian is an impetuous ATA (Air Transport Auxiliary) pilot ferrying military planes to their destinations. She ends up in RAF Bradwell and meets troubled Polish airman Stefan Bergel. He’s engaged to Ewa Hartman, who helps run a guest house for German officers in occupied Poland while secretly gathering intelligence for the Resistance — an endeavour as dangerous as it is vital.
Stefan is haunted by the Katyn massacre of 22,000 Polish soldiers by the USSR, and is in possession of a dark secret. He’s also prepared to manipulate the women who love him for the sake of a semblance of restitution.
Tense and tender, it captures the terrifying frailties of truth and trust in brutal times.
THE BOOK OF LOST FRIENDS By Lisa Wingate (Quercus €21)
WHEN the American Civil War was over and slavery was abolished, the torn-asunder families of former slaves were desperate to be reunited with their loved ones. They sent letters to Church newspapers — poignant pleas appealing for information — and this moving, yearning (if occasionally overly sentimental) novel is inspired by these columns.
In 1875 Louisiana, smart, courageous Hannie Gossett, 18, hopes to discover the fates of her mother and eight siblings and embarks on a perilous quest to discover the truth.
A century later, a resourceful young teacher takes her first job in a run-down school and struggles to find a subject to engage her disadvantaged, disinterested pupils. A secret cache of documents discovered at the old plantation house reveals Hannie’s story of ‘perseverance and grit’, and her resilient, remembered past offers the students fresh hope for the challenges of their futures.
LIBERATION By Imogen Kealey (Sphere €21)
THIS is loosely based on the life of the courageous Nancy Wake, a New Zealand nurse and journalist who moved to Marseille with her rich industrialist husband and joined the French Resistance in the Second World War.
Known as the White Mouse, for her ability to evade capture, Nancy was also notoriously sweary, a trait that is made much of in this brash novel, which is big on high-stakes action and small on subtlety and nuance.
It is undeniably exciting, as heroine Nancy, armed with Victory Red lipstick and high heels, parachutes into Occupied France, wins over the recalcitrant Maquis (the rural guerrillas involved in sabotage and military intelligence), cycles 500km to requisition a much-needed radio and delivers rousing patriotic speeches.
But it is also full of cliches and Hollywood set pieces, and it’s no surprise to learn it will soon be ‘a major film’.