Jessica Mann (1937–2018)

This was my first Jessica Mann; I understand the main character here, Dr Fidelis Berlin, appears elsewhere? This is her story, and very fascinating it is, too.

It seems that this novel is being sold in the 'crime' category, but really this element is secondary - or even tertiary. It is a complex narrative taking as its themes recovered memory, the mother-daughter relationship, witchcraft and child-abuse, Germans and Germany since the war, etc., etc.

Big ideas, then, and Mann creates a world teeming with vivid and credible characters with which to explore it. One cavil might be that it's sometimes difficult to remember who's who, or the relationship between whoever happens to be on the page at any given moment - but it's definitely a good read.

However, do be warned: this is a disturbing read, and sometimes a challenging one.

I might read Jessica Mann again, but probably not very soon.… (mais)

Without living through the lead-up to World War II in the UK ,and knowing first-hand the anxiety experienced by parents anticipating air raids and possible invasion, it’s hard to imagine what would make so many parents contemplate sending their children across hostile waters to live with relatives – and sometimes even strangers – overseas. From today’s vantage point, it seems quite bizarre, and yet this book captures reasonably well the spirit of those times, and the experiences of those caught up in them, recounting a story that even the author, who was herself an evacuee, dubs ‘extraordinary’ and ‘inconceivable’, describing the motivations and experiences of the parents who sent their children overseas, the families who took them in, and the children’s varied reactions.

It’s a scenario so alien to anything I’ve experienced, and I think this is why sometimes I felt I was reading about a very distant past, yet at other times the experiences recounted felt more recent and immediate. This book helped me understand something of the climate in which all of this occurred, and yet raised many more questions about what it would have actually been like to live through this period of history.

Fascinating and disturbing.… (mais)