Wartime tragedy brought to life Twisty tale one of year’s best

Nineteen Steps by Millie Bobby Brown (with Kathleen McGurl), HarperCollins, $34.99 .. .. .. .. ..

It’s 80 years since Britian’s greatest civilian tragedy occurred.

On March 3, 1943 173 men, women and children died en mass as they attempted to navigate the slippery steps leading down to the Bethnal Green tube station.

It had been requisitioned as a safe haven, a community shelter from Hitler’s bombs pounding the East End.

The multiple deaths were found to have been caused by asphyxiation. The 173 victims suffocated as they piled one on top of the other. The government attempted a whitewash.

It’s a grim slice of London’s wartime history that’s been largely unrecognised.

Emmy award winner Millie Bobbie Brown has fictionalised the true story of what happened that awful night. It is as her Nanny Ruth told it to her.

The result is an immensely readable account of East End life when the country was at its lowest ebb.

There is love as well as loss. But it is the safetyrelated differences between Bethnal Green council and the all-powerful Whitehall bureaucrats that make this much more than a run of the mill war or love story.

It’s a slice of days gone by that Millie Bobby Brown, working with ghostwriter Kathleen McGurl, has breathed life into.

—

Jill Nicholas

None of This is True by Lisa Jewell, Penguin/ Random House, $37 .. .. .. ..

Lisa Jewell has outdone herself with this twisty tale about two very different women.

Alix and Josie share the same birthday. That’s how they first encounter each other, celebrating their birthdays at a restaurant.

Their celebrations are very different. Josie sits quietly with her husband while Alix and her husband are joined by a bunch of rowdy friends.

Josie “runs into” Alix outside the school gates. Things move quickly from there. Alix is a well-known podcaster and

Josie talks her into doing a podcast about her. She tells Alix some awful things about her husband Walter.

In the meantime, Alix is having problems with her own husband and although she finds Josie a bit unsettling she can’t resist her story and wants to keep her coming to the studio so she can record it.

When Alix finally realises there is something dark and disturbing about Josie, it’s too late.

This is one of those stories that pops into your head at work and you find yourself thinking ‘I can’t wait to get home and read’. It’s definitely one of the best books I have read this year. — Linda Hall