Tag: WW2

Book Review – The Comfort of Ghosts by Jacqueline Winspear @AllisonandBusby

whatcathyreadnext5 Comments

About the Book

Book cover of The Comfort of Ghosts by Jacqueline Winspear

London, 1945. The capital is the backdrop for many struggling with demons unleashed by the recent World War. Maisie Dobbs is drawn into the story of a group of squatters, including an ill demobbed soldier, who have set up camp in the Belgravia mansion of her former in-laws Lord and Lady Julian Compton.

Her attempt to help brings to light a decades-old mystery that concerns her first husband, James Compton, who was killed while flying an experimental fighter aircraft. The deeply personal inquiry leads her to the second man, who is fighting the darkness of his own conscience following a secret mission.

It is an investigation that will challenge so much of what Maisie understands about her life and forces her to look at the past and the many mirrors that could have been reflecting something other than she had come to believe was truth.

Format: Hardcover (360 pages) Publisher: Allison & Busby
Publication date: 4th June 2024 Genre: Historical Fiction, Mystery

Find The Comfort of Ghosts on Goodreads

Purchase The Comfort of Ghosts from Bookshop.org [Disclosure: If you buy books linked to our site, we may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookshops]

My Review

The Comfort of Ghosts is the eighteenth – and final – book in the author’s Maisie Dobbs series. As such it’s partly a curtain call for many of the characters readers have encountered over the previous seventeen books. There are references to past events which would make it possible to read it as a standalone but I’d really recommend devouring the series from the beginning.

The ‘ghosts’ of the title are also very much present: people lost in the war, those who survived but are changed forever and those who must live with the consequences of their actions. And the evidence of the war is all around in damaged buildings, damaged people and a country deep in debt. ‘We’ll all be happy to leave the war and get on with the peace, such as it is, but it’ll be a good long time before it lets go of us, won’t it?’

If there’s a theme to the book, it’s change. For some it’s enforced change because of what they have gone through, for others it’s new opportunities at home or abroad. And the country is changing too, such as the establishment of the National Health Service and the building of new homes with modern amenities.

What hasn’t changed is that Maisie can’t resist getting involved in a mystery nor can she ignore the plight of people in peril. Bringing together the analytical skills learned from her deceased mentor, her trusted team of helpers and her admirable powers of persuasion, she seeks to get to the bottom of a mysterious death that no-one seems to want investigated. In the process she is forced to confront memories of her own personal tragedies but also to recognise the good fortune that has come her way: a loving husband and daughter, and a close-knit circle of family and friends.

I thought The Comfort of Ghosts was a beautifully balanced blend of heartbreak and hope for the future, and the perfect end to a wonderfully entertaining series.

I received an advance reader copy courtesy of Allison & Busby via NetGalley.

In three words: Moving, intriguing, satisfying
Try something similar: V For Victory by Lissa Evans

About the Author

Author Jacqueline Winspear

Jacqueline Winspear is the author of the New York Times bestselling Maisie Dobbs series. Her stand-alone books include The Care and Management of Lies, The White Lady and her memoir, This Time Next Year We’ll be Laughing. Originally from the United Kingdom, Winspear now divides her time between California and the Pacific Northwest. (Photo: Goodreads author page)

Connect with Jacqueline
Website | Facebook

Book Review – The Zone of Interest by Martin Amis

whatcathyreadnext6 Comments

About the Book

Book cover of The Zone of Interest by Martin Amis

Amidst the horrors of Auschwitz, German officer, Angelus Thomsen, has found love. But unfortunately for Thomsen, the object of his affection is already married to his camp commandant, Paul Doll.

As Thomsen and Doll’s wife pursue their passion – the gears of Nazi Germany’s Final Solution grinding around them – Doll is riven by suspicion. With his dignity in disrepute and his reputation on the line, Doll must take matters into his own hands and bring order back to the chaos that reigns around him.

Format: ebook (322 pages) Publisher: Vintage
Publication date: 30th September 2014 Genre: Historical Fiction

Find The Zone of Interest on Goodreads

Purchase The Zone of Interest from Bookshop.org

My Review

This was a book club pick prompted by the recent release of the film adaptation. I haven’t seem the film but I’m reliably informed it is quite different from the book in that, although it focuses on the family of the camp commander of the Auschwitz concentration camp, the camp is very much in the background – quite literally – whereas Amis takes us right inside it.

This is a very dark place to be and it’s fair to say many of the book club members found it a place they did not want to inhabit and either didn’t finish the book or, knowing the subject matter, decided not to read it at all. I can definitely understand this as there are some extremely disturbing scenes although of course these probably pale into insignificance compared to the reality. There are phrases in German scattered throughout the book without any accompanying translations which some readers also found a barrier. Personally, I didn’t bother looking up what they meant.

Each chapter of the book features three narrators: German officer Golo Thomsen, the nephew of Martin Bormann, who is in charge of the construction, using camp labour, of a factory to produce synthetic rubber; Paul Doll, the camp commandant (based on the real-life commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss); and Szmul, a member of a group of Jewish prisoners tasked with escorting fellow Jews to the gas chamber and disposing of their remains.

Initially Thomsen, something of a playboy, views his position and his Aryan good looks as an opportunity to bed any female he sets his eyes on but he soon becomes besotted by Hannah, the wife of the camp commandant. His feelings for her seem to awaken a sense of humanity in him and they share a growing awareness that Germany is going to lose the war.

Doll is obsessed with numbers, treating his role as something like the overseer of a production line, bewailing the unceasing demands from his superiors and the complaints of local inhabitants about the smells emanating from the camp and the state of the local drinking water. Often drinking himself into a stupor, Doll bemoans his wife’s unwillingness to sleep with him, observing her in the bathroom through a two-way mirror he has had installed. The sections written from his point of view are shot through with black humour as he becomes an increasingly ridiculous figure albeit a remarkably dangerous one.

Szmul knows his survival rests on his usefulness to the Germans but that this will end at some point. The only kindness he can bestow on those heading for the gas chamber is to tell them ways to shorten their suffering.

As I was reading the book, Hannah Arendt’s phrase ‘the banality of evil’ came to mind. This is mass murder as a bureaucratic operation with every detail recorded, prisoners’ worth calculated in terms of the work they can do versus the calories they consume, the arrival of trains carrying new prisoners meticulously scheduled and the most cost effective way of disposing of bodies argued over. At the same time, there is the nauseating artificiality of new arrivals being welcomed by the camp commandant whilst an orchestra plays in the background.

Many questions arise from the book: How did such an atrocity happen? How did a whole nation allow the ‘normalisation’ of mass murder? How did one individual manage to convince good people to do awful things? I don’t know the answers to those questions but books like this, even as disturbing to read as this one, should make us keep asking them, especially as we look around the world today.

The Zone of Interest is not an easy read but I think it’s an important one.

In three words: Hard-hitting, dark, thought-provoking
Try something similar: All the Broken Places by John Boyne

About the Author

Author Martin Amis

Martin Amis was an English novelist, essayist, and short story writer. His works included the novels Money, London Fields and The Information.

He passed away on Friday 19 May, 2023, aged 73.