Book Review – Small Bomb at Dimperley by Lissa Evans

About the Book

It’s 1945, and Corporal Valentine Vere-Thissett, aged 23, is on his way home. But ‘home’ is Dimperley, built in the 1500s, vast and dilapidated, up to its eaves in debt and half-full of fly-blown taxidermy and dependent relatives, the latter clinging to a way of life that has gone forever. And worst of all – following the death of his heroic older brother – Valentine is now Sir Valentine, and is responsible for the whole bloody place.

To Valentine, it’s a millstone; to Zena Baxter, who has never really had a home before being evacuated there with her small daughter, it’s a place of wonder and sentiment, somewhere that she can’t bear to leave. But Zena has been living with a secret, and the end of the war means she has to face a reckoning of her own…

Format: ebook (310 pages) Publisher: Transworld
Publication date: 5th September 2024 Genre: Historical Fiction

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My Review

Small Bomb at Dimperley is an utterly charming story with a colourful cast of characters and a host of very funny moments. Chief of the colourful characters is Valentine’s uncle, Alaric, who is engaged on writing a detailed – too detailed, probably – history of the Vere-Thissett family, including the origins of their unique role in coronations. It has become his life’s work and the only thing that ensures he’s making any progress and not just suffocating under a pile of documents is the ultra efficient Zena Baxter, employed as his secretary.

Dimperley Manor is a colourful character itself. A hotch potch of different architectural styles, it’s increasingly dilapidated with whole wings out of action, bits falling off the roof and attics stuffed with unwanted furniture and bizarre taxidermy. It’s leaching money and the family are running out of options to keep it going. For the Vere-Thissetts, Dimperley is a burdensome legacy but for others, such as Zena and her young daughter Allison, it’s a sanctuary. It’s going to take a miracle to save Dimperley – or a brainwave.

Alongside the eccentric characters, the humorous goings-on and the efforts to make Dimperley a going concern, there’s a more serious theme about the changes the war has brought and the need to adjust. I have to say this was the element of the book I appreciated the most. Some of the adjustments border on the minor. Valentine’s mother, Lady Irene (who could have come out of a Nancy Mitford novel) is having to get used to not having a house full of servants at her beck and call. She even has to deal with dog poop herself. Her granddaughters are demanding modern plumbing after five years spent in America as evacuees where people do not have to use chamber pots or take baths in lukewarm water and don’t look at you strangely when you mention the use of deodorant.

In the wider world, others are facing more significant changes: jobs and livelihoods that no longer exist, homes that no longer exist, families who have been displaced, breadwinners who never returned from the war. Zena recalls hearing stories ‘of lifelong sweethearts estranged, of soldiers returning to children not their own,of husbands back from the dead to find their wives remarried, of kind men turned nasty, of strong men enfeebled, of abandonment and of reconciliation.’ Indeed, she soon discovers her own future is not going to be as she’d imagined. But perhaps she can find a better one?

Although not my favourite of the books by Lissa Evans I’ve read (that would be V for Victory), Small Bomb at Dimperley is an engaging story that you will have you chuckling one minute and getting rather sentimental the next.

I received a review copy courtesy of Transworld via NetGalley.

In three words: Amiable, funny, entertaining

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About the Author

Lissa Evans grew up in the West Midlands. She comes from a family of voracious readers and spent most of her adolescence in the local library, thus becoming well read if not wildly popular.

After studying medicine at Newcastle University, she worked as a junior doctor for four years, before deciding to change to a career in which she wasn’t terrified the entire time; a job in BBC Radio light entertainment followed, and then a switch to television, where she produced and directed series including ‘Room 101’ and also ‘Father Ted’, for which she won a BAFTA.

Her first book, Spencer’s List was published in 2002, and since then she has written five more novels for adults (one of which, Their Finest Hour and a Half, was filmed in 2017) and four novels for children. She lives in London with her husband and two daughters. She still reads voraciously. (Photo: Goodreads author page/Bio: Author website)

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