The story is not unoriginal but strays a little too close to familiar on too many occasions meaning that some plot points, that are supposed to have great emotional intensity, are spotted from chapters away, which rather diffuses their impact. In some senses that would be correct We Must Be Brave falls into becoming a fairly standard Home Front Second World War story with the typical cast of characters – the well meaning and loving husband, the eccentric country house owners, the gossipy women of the village, the humble and honest farmhands – and many of the story beats are going to be familiar to many readers. I don’t wish to give a full synopsis of the story of We Must Be Brave, but I feel that its starting point might give you the idea that this is the kind of story you might have heard before. The story begins in 1940 but moves through time, first turning back to paint a picture of Depression-era Britain in the 1930s, then forward to the 1970s and the present day, showing the affect of time on people as well as place. With Ellen’s narration we hear the developments of her thoughts and feelings towards Pamela, her caution at first and then her dread of being separated from her new daughter. Pamela is not Ellen’s child and this is the centerpiece of the story – the conflict faced by Ellen and her husband in taking in a child that is not their own, their growing affection, and their, particularly Ellen’s, fears of the disruption of their new family life. The novel, so the description says, is about the fierce love we feel for our children, and the ability of that love to endure, and this description is partially accurate. In a sense the novel never leaves these two characters as they greatly influence every thought and action the other takes. The narrator is Ellen, just eighteen in 1940, and the girl is Pamela – a sleeping toddler unaccompanied on an evacuation bus to the safety of Upton, a small village in the south of England.
Four, maybe five years old.” This is how the 400 page, decade-spanning story begins. “She was fast asleep on the back seat of the bus. We Must Be Brave opens on an evacuation bus after an air raid on Southampton.
0 kommentar(er)
