Tag: HF Reading Challenge

Book Review – Once the Deed Is Done by Rachel Seiffert

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About the Book

Northern Germany, 1945. Dead of night and dead of winter, a boy hears soldiers and sees strangers – forced labourers – fleeing across the heathland by his small town: shawls and skirts in the snowfall. The end days are close, war brings risk and chance, and Benno is witness to something he barely understands.

Peace brings more soldiers – but English this time – and Red Cross staff officers. Ruth, on her first posting from London, is given charge of a refugee camp on the heathland, crowded with former forced labourers. As ever more arrive, she hears whispers, rumours of dark secrets about that snowy night.

The townspeople close ranks, shutting their mouths and minds to the winter’s events, but the town children are curious about the refugees on their doorstep, and Benno can’t carry his secret alone.

Format: Hardcover (464 pages) Publisher: Virago
Publication date: 6th March 2025 Genre: Historical Fiction

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My Review

Once the Deed Is Done is set in the closing months of World War II. American and British forces are on Germany’s western borders and Soviet troops are closing in on Berlin. Millions of people have been displaced during the six years of war including those taken from their homes by the Nazis to work as forced labour on farms and in factories. Told from multiple points of view, the book explores the impact of the war on the displaced people but also German citizens now facing the prospect of defeat.

Ruth Novak, a Red Cross officer, has been posted to one of the camps set up to house displaced people on the site of a munitions factory outside the small town of Lüneburg in Lower Saxony. Initially her focus is on the needs of the former factory workers most of whom are suffering from extreme malnutrition as a result of their ill treatment. But day by day other displaced people arrive at the camp seeking food and shelter. What many of them are also seeking is news of loved ones. Ruth diligently records their details on index cards, to which she adds names of people they want to trace. ‘Always more names to add to her records. Each a dear friend, or a grown son, or a neighbour to someone.’ But how to begin to reunite people in the chaotic aftermath of war? Ruth becomes equally concerned about the fate of those in a rumoured ‘winter transport’ of labourers which no-one in the town seems to want to talk about. And her superiors insist there are other priorities. As it turns out, Ruth was right to be concerned although I suspect most readers will have a good idea about what might have happened.

Meanwhile the residents of Lüneburg are having to come to terms with their country’s defeat as well as the growing number of people housed in the camp which seems to expand almost daily, impinging more and more on the town and its resources. Some are mourning those killed in the war, others are anxiously awaiting news of when their loved ones will return whilst those who actively supported the Nazi regime face being brought to account. For some though the end of the Nazi regime comes as a relief.

The phrase ‘Everyone has their lost’ sums up the book. The German people’s belief in their country’s invincibility has been shattered and their homeland is now war-ravaged and divided. For many of the displaced people in the camp returning home means going back to villages destroyed by war, or in the case of Polish and Ukranian workers, to places now under the influence of the Soviet Union meaning they no longer have their national or cultural identity. Young people who grew up through the war years have had their childhoods stolen. And then of course there are the missing, those lost perhaps never to be found.

The book sheds a welcome spotlight on the plight of displaced people. Although set in World War II, it’s not difficult to come up with contemporary parallells. Arguably, the same is true when it comes to the issue of complicitly. As Ruth comments at one point, ‘This country… These people. They let all this happen right under their noses?’

Once the Deed Is Done is one of the five books shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2026. The winner will be announced on 11th June at the Borders Book Festival.

In three words: Powerful, insightful, thought-provoking

About the Author

Rachel Seiffert is one of Virago’s most critically acclaimed contemporary novelists. Her first book, The Dark Room (2001), was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and made into the feature film Lore. In 2003, she was named one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists, and in 2011 she received the E.M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Field Study, her collection of short stories published in 2004, received an award from PEN International. Her second novel, Afterwards (2007), third novel The Walk Home (2014) and fourth novel A Boy in Winter (2017) were all longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Her books have been published in eighteen languages. (Photo: Author website)

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Book Review – Carrion Crow by Heather Parry

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About the Book

Marguerite Périgord is locked in the attic of her family home, a towering Chelsea house overlooking the stinking Thames.

For company she has a sewing machine, Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management, and a carrion crow who has come to nest in the rafters. Restless, she spends her waning energies on the fascinations of her own body, memorising Mrs. Beeton’s advice and longing for life outside.

Cécile Périgord has confined her daughter Marguerite for her own good.

Cécile is concerned that Marguerite’s engagement to a much older, near-penniless solicitor, will drag the family name – her husband’s name, that is – into disrepute. And for Cécile, who has worked hard at her own betterment, this simply won’t do. Cécile’s life has taught her that no matter how high a woman climbs she can just as readily fall.

Of course, both have their secrets, intentions and histories to hide. As Marguerite’s patience turns into rage, the boundaries of her mind and body start to fray.

Format: Paperback (272 pages) Publisher: Transworld
Publication date: 2nd October 2025 Genre: Historical Fiction

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My Review

In her Acknowledgments, the author describes Carrion Crow as ‘my odd and visceral work’. Well, she’s definitely not wrong there. This is a book which features just about every bodily effusion you can imagine, some real ‘yuck’ moments and physical acts that made me wince. Its real life counterpart is the story of Blanche Monnier, a French socialite who was kept locked in a small room by her mother and brother for 25 years.

Carrion Crow alternates between the story of Marguerite’s physical and mental decline as a result of her confinement and the back story of her mother Cécile.

Initially, Marguerite seems to accept her mother Cécile’s explanation for her confinement, that it is a necessary period of education in preparation for her forthcoming marriage to elderly solicitor, Mr Lewis. Hence her attic room being equipped with a sewing machine and, crucially, a copy of Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management which Marguerite is encouraged to read from cover to cover.

At first it’s the stench of the nearby River Thames that prevails in Marguerite’s attic room but that is gradually replaced by the smell of decay emanating from the room and eventually, I’m sorry to say, from Marguerite herself. Marguerite’s is a solitary existence, if you exclude the lice that infest her body, punctuated only by visits from her mother to bring food, although this is often barely enough to sustain her. Sometimes Cécile brings a letter from Mr Lewis in which he continues to express his desire to marry her and willingness to be patient. As Cécile’s visit become less frequent, Marguerite is forced to resort to other sources of sustenance many of which are too revolting to describe here. When Marguerite discovers a female carrion crow has built a nest in the roof space, she finds solace in it as an example of devoted motherhood not bound by the constraints of society. Marguerite herself longs for a child as part of a carefully thought through plan designed to enable her to achieve true fulfillment.

Cécile’s father built a successful business empire through astute commercial instincts and a singleminded belief that life was about bettering oneself, a trait he sought to instil in his daughter from an early age. As a result the family were wealthy but lacked social standing. Her father’s solution: to marry her to the son of an aristocratic French family, the Périgords. The senior members of the family were not keen on the match but were swayed by the substantial dowry offered by Cécile’s father. The word voracious is insufficient to describe the sexual appetite of Cécile’s husband. For him, nowhere is off limits for sexual congress, as Cécile discovers on the morning of her wedding, and no perversion is to be left unexplored. Nor is privacy a prerequisite, as the household servants learn, and initially Cécile is an enthusiastic participant in this unbridled copulation. When Marguerite, the first of their three children, is born Cécile becomes the picture of a devoted mother. However, everything changes when unwelcome truths are revealed that if made public would bring disgrace. Her situation changes overnight so now everything is a burden and is hers alone to bear. This (sort of) provides an explanation if not a justification for her treatment of Marguerite.

There were quite a few points in the book where I thought to myself, I don’t think I can stomach any more of this, only to find myself unable to stop reading, a testament to the author’s ability to create something that simultaneously repels and compels.

I don’t think I’ve ever read a book like Carrion Crow and I’m not entirely sure I’d want to tackle anything so dark and unsettling again. However, if you’re a fan of body horror in cinematic or literary form, then this book’s combination of those elements with a historical setting might well be for you.

I received a digital review copy via NetGalley.

In three words: Unsettling, atmospheric, intense
Try something similar: The Warlow Experiment by Alix Nathan

About the Author

Heather Parry is a writer of fiction and nonfiction. Her debut novel, Orpheus Builds a Girl, was shortlisted for the Saltire Fiction Book of the Year award and longlisted for the Polari First Book Prize. She is also the author of a short story collection, This Is My Body, Given For You, and a short nonfiction book, Electric Dreams: On Sex Robots and the Failed Promises of Capitalism, and writes the Substack general observations on eggs. She was raised in Rotherham and lives in Glasgow with her partner and their cats, Fidel and Ernesto. (Photo/bio: Goodreads author page)

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