Tag: historical fiction

#BookReview Miss Graham’s Cold War Cookbook by Celia Rees @HarperFiction

whatcathyreadnext2 Comments

Miss Graham BT PosterWelcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for Miss Graham’s Cold War Cookbook by Celia Rees which was published on 23rd July 2020. I’m delighted to be co-hosting today’s stop with the lovely Nicola at Short Book & Scribes. My thanks to Anne at Random Things Tours for inviting me to get involved and to HarperCollins for my review copy.

20200717_093842-1About the Book

An ordinary woman. A book of recipes. The perfect cover for spying…

Sent to Germany in the chaotic aftermath of World War II, Edith Graham is finally getting the chance to do her bit. Having taught at a girls’ school during the conflict, she leaps at the opportunity to escape an ordinary life – but Edith is not everything she seems to be.

Under the guise of her innocent cover story, Edith has been recruited to root out Nazis who are trying to escape prosecution. Secretly, she is sending coding messages back to the UK, hidden inside innocuous recipes sent to a friend – after all, who would expect notes on sauerkraut to contain the clues that would crack a criminal underground network?

But the closer she gets to the truth, the muddier the line becomes between good and evil. In a dangerous world of shifting loyalties, when the enemy wears the face of a friend, who do you trust?

Format: Hardcover (480 pages)    Publisher: HarperCollins
Publication date: 23rd July 2020 Genre: Historical fiction

Find Miss Graham’s Cold War Cookbook on Goodreads

Purchase links*
Amazon UK| Hive (supporting UK bookshops)
*links provided for convenience not as part of an affiliate programme

My Review

Of the many things I loved about Miss Graham’s Cold War Cookbook, the standout was Miss Graham herself. Edith is smart, shrewd and eager to do good, to make a difference. Her family don’t see it that way, but her decision to work for the Control Commission in Germany is not an excuse to shirk family responsibilities, it’s out of a desire to do something. “All through the war, she’d seen others leave to join the forces, do useful work. She’d done nothing. She felt wasted and unfulfilled, as though she’d missed an important experience.”

Edith has a keen sense of justice and shows empathy towards those whom others ignore. For example, the German maids employed in the house where she is billeted are treated as mere skivvies, symbols of a defeated nation, by some of the other girls who live there. Edith treats them as equals, listens to their stories and tries to help them where she can. However, Edith is no straight-laced prude; she’s not averse to the occasional amorous adventure.

I also loved Edith’s friends, Adeline and Dori, equally remarkable women with their own very personal missions to undertake, whether that’s exposing the realities of war to the wider public or learning the fate of wartime comrades. (In respect of the latter, I liked the inclusion of references to real-life heroines who served with the Special Operations Executive, such as Noor Inayat Khan.) Both Adeline and Dori will prove to be true friends to Edith in a way I found especially moving.

There are so many clever touches in the book. Not just the recipes and menus at the beginning of each chapter, or the central idea of using a cookery book to send coded messages, but the use of cooking as a metaphor. For example, the process of collecting intelligence is described as “a patient gathering. A foraging, a nosing up of morsels” and, at one point, Edith fears she’s “following a breadcrumb trail of duplicity”. Other clever elements include Edith’s invented friend who provides her with convenient excuses for trips away, reminding me of Algernon Moncrieff’s invalid friend Bunbury in Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, and the intriguing prologue which I simply had to reread – with fresh insight – once I’d finished the book.

The gap between “the conquerors and the conquered” is vividly brought home in the contrast between the generous portions of food enjoyed by the Allies in their messes or billets and that of the German citizens and thousands of displaced people “caught like a feather on the great gusting breath of war, picked up and put down again”. Not for the British or Americans pancakes made of potato peelings or ‘tea’ made from pine needles, but copious quantities of toast and jam, and homely dishes such as spotted dick. The period detail about food, clothing and so on, and the descriptions of the bomb-damaged German cities with their “churned streets carved through ruins and rubble” is clearly the result of impeccable and lengthy research.

Although there are delicious sounding recipes for cakes and pastries, Miss Graham’s Cold War Cookbook is definitely not all sweetness. Far from it. There are sour and bitter flavours as well, and moments of real darkness that may shock and surprise you. For example, the testimonies of some of the people Edith encounters; tales of suffering, displacement and wartime atrocities that are a “black muster roll of monstrous perversions”. Like the reader, Edith awakens to the growing realisation that no side has the monopoly on right and – like that hotel dinner menu staple, the Vienna steak – not everything is exactly what it claims to be. The warning “There’s a darker side of life in the Zone” proves all too true.

The final chapters are full of drama and tension, keeping me completely gripped. If you’ll pardon the pun, Miss Graham’s Cold War Cookbook contains all the ingredients I look for in great historical fiction. I loved everything about it and it’s definitely in the running to be one of my favourite books of the year.

In three words: Compelling, moving, dramatic

Try something similar: Then We Take Berlin by John Lawton

Follow this blog via Bloglovin

Celia ReesAbout the Author

Celia Rees was born in Solihull, West Midlands, UK. She studied History and Politics at Warwick University and has a Master’s degree from Birmingham University. She taught English in city comprehensive schools for seventeen years before beginning her writing career.

She is the author of over twenty acclaimed books for young adults and has won various prizes both in Britain and abroad. Her work has been translated into twenty-eight languages. Celia lives in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, with her husband. Miss Graham’s Cold War Cookbook is her first adult novel.

Connect with Celia
Website | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | Goodreads

 

#BookReview Munich by Robert Harris

whatcathyreadnext9 Comments

MunichAbout the Book

September 1938. Hitler is determined to start a war. Chamberlain is desperate to preserve the peace. The issue is to be decided in a city that will forever afterwards be notorious for what takes place there. Munich.

As Chamberlain’s plane judders over the Channel and the Fürher’s train steams relentlessly south from Berlin, two young men travel with secrets of their own. Hugh Legat is one of Chamberlain’s private secretaries; Paul Hartmann a German diplomat and member of the anti-Hitler resistance. Great friends at Oxford before Hitler came to power, they haven’t seen one another since they were last in Munich six years earlier. Now, as the future of Europe hangs in the balance, their paths are destined to cross again .

When the stakes are this high, who are you willing to betray? Your friends, your family, your country or your conscience?

Format: Hardcover (352 pages)                Publisher: Hutchinson
Publication date: 21st September 2017 Genre: Historical fiction

Find Munich on Goodreads

Purchase links*
Amazon UK | Hive (supporting UK bookshops)
*links provided for convenience not as part of an affiliate programme

 

My Review

Despite becoming a fan of Robert Harris’s writing since reading An Officer and A Spy, his 2017 novel Munich has been sitting on my bookshelf for quite a while. Including it in my 20 Books of Summer list was a deliberate ploy to make me finally read it, as well as acquiring the audio book version (narrated brilliantly by David Rintoul) so I could listen or read as the mood took me. How glad I am I did as I thought it was terrific.

Despite the fact we know from our history books the agreement reached at the Munich conference did not ultimately prevent the outbreak of war, the author still manages to create an atmosphere of tension and expectation. The book gives a fascinating, behind the scenes insight into the backroom going-ons on the British side: the careful drafting and re-drafting of papers and statements, the discussions with advisers, the telegrams to and fro from London. I particularly liked the scenes on the plane as Chamberlain and his team of diplomats fly to the conference. Surely only the British could have an in-flight meal sourced from a Fortnum & Mason hamper!

On the German side, I was transfixed by  the scenes on Hitler’s train as the Fuhrer and his entourage travel to Munich. It’s here that both German diplomat Paul Hartmann and the reader have their first face to face encounter with Hitler. For Hartmann, it is a pivotal moment. He also picks up a rather unwelcome fellow passenger who will dog his footsteps in the days to come.

Feted at the time (even in Germany, which annoyed Hitler intensely), Chamberlain was later accused of appeasing Hitler and the Munich agreement was regarded as a failure because it did not prevent the outbreak of war. In the author’s hands, the reader gets a more sympathetic and nuanced appraisal of Chamberlain. There is a touching scene in the garden of 10 Downing Street in which the reader gets a true sense of what lies behind Chamberlain’s steely determination to avoid war. And far from being a failure, the author subtly prompts the reader to consider that, in at least delaying the outbreak of war, the Munich agreement provided valuable time for Britain to rearm.

One of the questions at the back of my mind whilst reading/listening to the book was how much of the story was based on fact and how much the author’s imagination. That question was answered when I listened to this interview with Robert Harris recorded in 2017. In short, pretty much all of the events are based on documented fact. The only two fictional characters are Hugh Legat and Paul Hartmann, although even the latter is inspired by a real life figure. Legat and Hartmann allow the author to introduce an element of espionage to the plot, adding further tension as both are risking their careers, possibly their lives.

An autocratic leader with narcissistic tendencies who removes anyone who disagrees with him, surrounds himself only with people willing to do his bidding, acts on whim, has little time for detail and delivers rabble-rousing speeches in which he incites hatred of others. Just as well we no longer have individuals like that in positions of power in the world, isn’t it?

Munich is my favourite kind of historical fiction: based on fact but enhanced by the author’s imagination. I learned a lot from the book and was thoroughly entertained at the same time.

In three words: Fascinating, detailed, suspenseful

Try something similar: Hitler’s Secret by Rory Clements

Follow this blog via Bloglovin

About the Author

Robert Harris is the author of thirteen bestselling novels: the Cicero Trilogy – Imperium, Lustrum and Dictator – Fatherland, Enigma, Archangel, Pompeii, The Ghost, The Fear Index, An Officer and a Spy, which won four prizes including the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, Conclave, Munich and The Second Sleep. Several of his books have been filmed, including The Ghost, which was directed by Roman Polanski. His work has been translated into forty languages and he is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He lives in West Berkshire with his wife, Gill Hornby. His next book, V2, is coming out in Autumn 2020.

Connect with Robert
Website | Twitter | Facebook