Category: Throwback Thursday

Throwback Thursday: Shelter by Sarah Franklin

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ThrowbackThursday

Throwback Thursday is a weekly meme originally created by Renee at It’s Book Talk. It’s designed as an opportunity to share old favourites as well as books that we’ve finally got around to reading that were published over a year ago.

Today I’m revisiting a book I reviewed early on in my blogging ‘career’ – Shelter by Sarah Franklin.  First published in hardback July 2017, it was recently published in paperback with an evocative new cover. A perfect excuse to grab a copy if you haven’t already read this fabulous book!

You can read my original review below and also my interview with Sarah about Shelter here.

Shelter PBAbout the Book

Early Spring, 1944. In a clearing deep within an English forest two lost souls meet for the first time. Connie Granger has escaped the devastation of her bombed out city home. She has found work in the Women’s Timber Corps, and for her, this remote community must now serve a secret purpose. Seppe, an Italian prisoner of war, is haunted by his memories. But in the forest camp, he finds a strange kind of freedom. Their meeting signals new beginnings. In each other they find the means to imagine their own lives anew and to face that which each fears the most.

But outside their haven, the world is ravaged by war and old certainties are crumbling. Both Connie and Seppe must make a life-defining choice which threatens their fragile existence. How will they make sense of this new world, and find their place within it? What does it mean to be a woman, or a foreign man, in these days of darkness and new light? A beautiful, gentle and deeply powerful novel about finding solace in the most troubled times, about love, about hope and about renewal after devastation. It asks us to consider what makes a family, what price a woman must pay to live as she chooses, and what we’d fight to the bitter end to protect.

Format: Hardcover, ebook, paperback (432 pp.)            Publisher: Bonnier Zaffre
Published: Hardcover 27th July ‘17, Paperback 31st May ’18 Genre: Historical Fiction

Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk ǀ Amazon.com | Hive.co.uk (supporting local UK bookshops)
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find Shelter on Goodreads

My Review

All her life Connie’s had the urge to break away, to explore what life has to offer away from the streets and factories of Coventry. She doesn’t know what form this new life will take or how she’s going to do it. What she does know it that she’s got to do it. Spirited, determined and reckless, the Second World War brings Connie the opportunity to seek what she’s looking for but the price for that opportunity is a high one. Forced by circumstances to be totally self-reliant and desperate to leave bad memories behind, she joins the Women’s Timber Corps and finds herself posted to The Forest of Dean to train as a ‘lumberjill’.

Chance brings together Connie and Seppe, an Italian POW, who is trying to escape his own demons. Thoughtful and sensitive, Seppe is initially cowed by his traumatic relationship with his violent father whose malevolent presence seems able to reach even into the confines of the POW camp.  ‘The spikes of his father’s rancour were undimmed by the flimsy paper. A spiral of venom rose from the lines, the sheen of anger, pride and sheer vicious temper bitter in Seppe’s mouth.’

Despite being haunted by guilt and by what he witnessed during the war, Seppe gradually grows in inner strength as he finds acceptance from the local community.   For Connie and Seppe, the forest provides shelter from the outside world – quite literally at times.   However, for those born and bred in the forest, the war, and those it brings in its wake, is an unwanted incursion into their lives.  ‘Those evacuees are still out here, causing chaos in the school. And…we’ve got Yanks in the forest, whole regiments of them…The other big change is that we’ve got POWs up at Broadwell.’

The war is also a threat to the very existence of the forest itself with the constant demands for timber to support the war effort.  ‘The forest itself warned them of loss even as they chopped it down. Bloody great gaps staring at them in the very woods that had sheltered them all their lives, and people pulled from this life into a new world that swallowed them up.’

I loved the way the author made the forest another character in the story with almost human qualities: ‘Amos pushed in amongst the branches until they almost held him in an embrace.’ I thought the author struck a good balance between historical fact about wartime events and the story of Connie, Seppe and the other inhabitants of The Forest of Dean.   Sometimes events erred slightly on the side of convenience but I think we must allow an author some artistic licence and, who knows, sometimes things are just meant to be. Finally, I always admire an author who is brave enough not to spell out the conclusion of a book but to let the reader imagine it for themselves.

I thought this was an outstanding debut. Shelter has an authentic period atmosphere with wonderful characters who take you on an intense but heart-warming journey.  I received an advance reader copy courtesy of NetGalley and publishers, Bonnier Zaffre, in return for an honest review.

In three words: Intimate, atmospheric, emotional

Try something similar…Miss Boston and Miss Hargreaves by Rachel Malik (read my review here)

Sarah FranklinAbout the Author

Sarah Franklin grew up in rural Gloucestershire and now lives with her family between Oxford and London. She has written for the Guardian, Psychologies magazine, The Pool, the Sunday Express and the Seattle Times. Her creative non-fiction has been published in anthologies in the USA and appeared on radio affiliates there. Sarah is founder and host of popular Oxford literary night, Short Stories Aloud, a Senior Lecturer at the Oxford International Centre for Publishing Studies, and a judge for the Costa Short Story Award. She was awarded a mentorship under the Jerwood/Arvon scheme to work on her debut novel, Shelter, which will be published by Bonnier Zaffre in July 2017.

Connect with Sarah

Website ǀ Twitter ǀ Goodreads

Throwback Thursday: The Dream Shelf by Jeff Russell

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ThrowbackThursday

Throwback Thursday is a weekly meme created by Renee at It’s Book Talk.  It’s designed as an opportunity to share old favourites as well as books that we’ve finally got around to reading that were published over a year ago.

Today I’m revisiting a book I reviewed quite a while ago – The Dream Shelf by Jeff Russell which was published in July 2013.   You can read an excerpt from the book here and also my Q&A with Jeff Russell here.

TheDreamShelfAbout the Book

No pictures, no past and yet his dreams were left on the shelf. A book, a toy, a framed quote and a plaster bust represented the places Sam’s father wanted to see and things he wanted to do. But Robert Archer refused to discuss his background and when he died unexpectedly Sam was left with the bitter regret of a lost opportunity to learn more about his dad.   Things change with the discovery of a hidden yearbook, a list of names and a government document. Sam’s interest in his father’s life becomes a surreptitious tale that ignites a passion to know what happened to him and why his secrets could not be shared. He embarks on a quest for ‘his story’, one with both the promise of closure and the threat of learning more than he wants to know. The trail leads to Gus, a WWII veteran, and his daughter Karen, who is torn between helping Sam and protecting her father. Together they learn the dark secret behind the dream shelf, the high cost of integrity and the lessons a father left behind for his son.

Format: ebook (171 pp.)     Publisher: Cabern Publishing
Published: 25th July 2013   Genre: Historical Fiction

Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk  ǀ  Amazon.com
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find The Dream Shelf on Goodreads

My Review

Following the death of his father, Sam sets out to discover more about the missing years in his father’s story, the years before his marriage to Sam’s mother.  His motivation is not only to fill in the gaps in both his own ‘story’ and that of his father; it also piques his personal and professional interest in historical research.  All Sam has to go on initially is a shelf of seemingly random objects belonging to his late father that Sam believes represented his father’s dreams.

DreamShelf‘High on the wall above the desk, beyond the reach of a young boy’s curious hands, was a small shelf that held an odd assortment of knickknacks.  Privately Sam referred to it as the ‘dream shelf’, a repository for sacred possessions that likely came from dime-stores and garage sales… Not until childhood gave way to maturity did he realize their collective significance.  The book about Manhattan and the model trolley car represented the cities of New York and San Francisco…while the framed literary quote and the plaster bust signified the arts and science.’   

Then Sam comes across two other clues – a school yearbook and a list of names – which point to a new direction and set him off on a quest to find the missing pieces of his father’s life, to find out why his father never spoke about his past or tried to fulfil his own dreams, instead investing all his time and energy in Sam’s future.   In fact, he starts to wonder if he really ever truly knew his father. ‘He gave me everything, and when I look back on my life I see him.  But when I look back on his life…it isn’t there.’ 

Sam’s very analytical, methodical approach to following up the clues is described in detail.   Eventually he tracks down one of the people on his father’s list – Gus – but finds him similarly reticent about providing information about his wartime experience.  Any answers he does give are seemingly riddles.    In the process of his investigation, Sam finds himself drawn to Gus’s daughter, Karen, although she is torn between wanting to help Sam, find answers herself and protect her father’s fragile self.  Eventually the mystery is unravelled but not before Sam (and Karen) have to face some uncomfortable truths – clearly the moral is be careful what you wish for.   Also, Sam realises the actual meaning of the objects on the ‘dream shelf’ may be entirely different to that he had imagined.

The book explores some interesting moral questions such as whether it is ever right to do the wrong thing, such as disobey an order if it conflicts with a matter of personal principle.  It also focuses on the impact the decision of a single person can have on the outcome of wider events.  The author uses both the story of Sam’s father and that of a fictional soldier of the American Civil War (whose story is Sam is also researching) to explore these ideas.

Clearly the author is fascinated by the way people think and their decision making processes.   I liked the developing relationship between Karen and Sam but, again, some of the dialogue felt rather stilted – more like therapy sessions than normal conversations you would have on a dinner date or riverside walk.   But perhaps I’m wrong and those are the kinds of conversations that a historian and a counsellor do have in real life!  I found the events towards the end of the book very moving but its theme of coming to terms with the past and moving on injected a welcome note of hope for the future at the end of the book.

I’d like to thank the author for my review copy which was provided in return for an honest review.

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In three words: Thought-provoking, intriguing, absorbing

Try something similar… Revenants: The Odyssey Home by Scott Kauffman (read my review here)

JeffRussellAbout the Author

Jeff: I am a tale-spinner. My childhood heroes were Jules Verne and Victor Appleton II, architects of fantastic adventures. Hemingway stepped in when I discovered that the trials and triumphs of real people – those with limited physical and financial resources – were even more intriguing than science fiction. Today I try to follow that example with my own characters. They are the ‘you and me’ of the world, ordinary people facing extraordinary circumstances, beaten down perhaps and yet determined to succeed. Invariably they find adventure, romance and self-fulfilment, as should we all.  When not absorbed in the pages of some new author or hammering away at my latest manuscript I can be found living and running in Stowe, VT.

Connect with Jeff

Website ǀ  Twitter ǀ  Goodreads