I had to stop reading The Soldier's Home
I was sat reading it in a trampoline park and feared I would cry in public. I finished it in the privacy of my own home. I didn't cry, but only just and I think only because of the trampoline break in between chapters.
"The war is over and his home was built … but a home is just a set of empty rooms without people and love. After surviving the devastation, secrets, lies and tragedies of a community under German occupation, can people now rekindle their lives, and rediscover their reasons for surviving? As the soldier waits for the return of his love, the world keeps moving, threatening to leave his hopes and dreams behind. History, secrets and painful truths collide in this astonishingly human, warm and emotive sequel from writer George Costigan."
I was very kindly given a copy of this book by Urbane Publications in exchange for an honest review. I had never heard of its predecessor, The Single Soldier although I had seen Costigan in the TV series Vera recently. The book is classed as a stand alone novel although it would really have helped me to have read the first one to get more of the back story between main characters Jacques and Simone.
To be brutally honest I wasn't expecting much and started it ambivalent. Boy, what a fool!
The first half of the book is delivered solely in letters from Simone to Jacques. It was an unusual take yet I immediately fell in love with the prose. Living in America raising their son alone, Simone's references to the alien 'Americans' slowly began to include her as she assimilated into society and I read with an impending sense of doom for Jacques.
Never have I read such intensely heartbreaking prose. Unable to afford to return to France, raising a son who thought of himself as American who had never met his french father. How could Simone ever return to Jacques? Yet she did, and that was even more heartbreaking (it was around this point I hit the trampoline park). I loved quiet, stoic Jacques, yet Costigan wrote Simone in such a way as you couldn't hate her for the life choices she was making. And God, that ending!
About half way through we were wrenched from Jacques to Enid a slightly middle aged school teacher (who will no doubt be correcting my grammar as I type). At first I couldn't get away with the change, I felt disjointed and couldn't emphasis with Enid. The Thatcher references and the miners strike just didn't do it for me and I was internally screaming 'take me back to France'!!! Costigan listened and eventually I warmed to Enid, the pieces made sense and fitted together into a beautiful and fitting ending.
My brilliant reading in 2019 continues. I am so, so grateful to Urbane for sending me the book. It's one of the most emotional, beautiful books that I have read in a long time. As I said I would never have read it under normal circumstances and only began as I felt duty bound to having received it for free. It's stunning. I'll type that again - it's stunning. I will purchase and read The Single Soldier and I will continue to nurse my bruised heart. I'm only relieved that I did not cry at a trampoline park.
I was sat reading it in a trampoline park and feared I would cry in public. I finished it in the privacy of my own home. I didn't cry, but only just and I think only because of the trampoline break in between chapters.
"The war is over and his home was built … but a home is just a set of empty rooms without people and love. After surviving the devastation, secrets, lies and tragedies of a community under German occupation, can people now rekindle their lives, and rediscover their reasons for surviving? As the soldier waits for the return of his love, the world keeps moving, threatening to leave his hopes and dreams behind. History, secrets and painful truths collide in this astonishingly human, warm and emotive sequel from writer George Costigan."
I was very kindly given a copy of this book by Urbane Publications in exchange for an honest review. I had never heard of its predecessor, The Single Soldier although I had seen Costigan in the TV series Vera recently. The book is classed as a stand alone novel although it would really have helped me to have read the first one to get more of the back story between main characters Jacques and Simone.
To be brutally honest I wasn't expecting much and started it ambivalent. Boy, what a fool!
The first half of the book is delivered solely in letters from Simone to Jacques. It was an unusual take yet I immediately fell in love with the prose. Living in America raising their son alone, Simone's references to the alien 'Americans' slowly began to include her as she assimilated into society and I read with an impending sense of doom for Jacques.
Never have I read such intensely heartbreaking prose. Unable to afford to return to France, raising a son who thought of himself as American who had never met his french father. How could Simone ever return to Jacques? Yet she did, and that was even more heartbreaking (it was around this point I hit the trampoline park). I loved quiet, stoic Jacques, yet Costigan wrote Simone in such a way as you couldn't hate her for the life choices she was making. And God, that ending!
About half way through we were wrenched from Jacques to Enid a slightly middle aged school teacher (who will no doubt be correcting my grammar as I type). At first I couldn't get away with the change, I felt disjointed and couldn't emphasis with Enid. The Thatcher references and the miners strike just didn't do it for me and I was internally screaming 'take me back to France'!!! Costigan listened and eventually I warmed to Enid, the pieces made sense and fitted together into a beautiful and fitting ending.
My brilliant reading in 2019 continues. I am so, so grateful to Urbane for sending me the book. It's one of the most emotional, beautiful books that I have read in a long time. As I said I would never have read it under normal circumstances and only began as I felt duty bound to having received it for free. It's stunning. I'll type that again - it's stunning. I will purchase and read The Single Soldier and I will continue to nurse my bruised heart. I'm only relieved that I did not cry at a trampoline park.
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