Lucy Caldwell

I raced through this book. It's an engaging story about a middle class Belfast story dealing with WWII, recently and shockingly arrived in their home city. Audrey is a clever office worker, walking out with a young GP. Lucy, slightly younger, is an a Air Warden, awash with emotions over a first love affair that must of necessity stay secret. We meet their parents and kid brother Paul, and become as consumed as they do by the four days of unrelenting bombardment of their home city. Involving, nuanced and thoroughly well told, this is a book I couldn't put down.… (altro)

The Belfast "blitz" of 1941 is described through the lives of two sisters in a well-to-do family living in North Belfast. Emma is twenty-one and a volunteer warden in the Civil Defense Service. Emma has fallen in love with Sylvia, a co-worker. Audrey works in the tax office and is engaged to Richard, a physician who works with their father, Philip, also a doctor. The wife and mother, Florence, is aware she is maturing into the mid phase of her life. It seems a secure marriage and stable family but in her memories she still yearns and mourns for a former lover, seemingly lost in the Great War.

After Easter, Belfast is bombed by the Nazi's, aiming for the industrial area in East Belfast, principally the shipyards. Many bombs go astray and casualties and property destruction are severe. Philip races to the hospital where he encounters scenes of horror, even to an experienced physician. Emma is deeply in love with Sylvia, envisioning a life together, hidden from the social reprobation their relationship would engender. Audrey finds a young girl lost in the havoc and brings her home until finally reunited with her mother. Audrey is anticipating her marriage to Richard, but you sense she is beginning to doubt that this is what she really wants. Emma is devastated when Sylvia is lost in a bomb blast. Audrey breaks off the engagement at the last minute.

There were four raids on Belfast in 1941. One raid was said to have had the largest fatalities after the blitz of London. Damage to property and infrastructure was colossal. Over 220,000 people fled the city during and after the raids. The author has an excellent sense of place of Belfast of the 1940's.… (altro)