Well-written. Disappointing. Ghost/time-slip/romance mash-up, and none of the elements really deliver.
Helen Dunmore is a very fine writer (who, sadly, passed away just around the time of the publication of her last novel, Birdcage Walk, which I enjoyed very much). The biographic blurb in the flyleaf of this neat, well-presented little novella states proudly that this is "her first ghost story," and I think that shows -- her heart is more in the period detail, both of the early 1950s "now" of the novel, and in the ghostly flashbacks to wartime life, and a forbidden romance.
There are hints that Dunmore had a sense of what the three disparate elements -- the haunting, the time-slip and the romance -- might be pulling toward: there are a couple of lovely, wistful lines, like
"... some things never seem to stop happening, do they?" said Janet Ingoldby quietly.
This line, from a previously unsympathetic character -- almost a cardboard cut-out, only there to prey on the anxieties and self-doubt of Isabel, the main character -- suggests that Isabel isn't the only one who might be haunted. But nothing comes of that. For me, nothing comes of much, really.
Helen Dunmore is a very fine writer (who, sadly, passed away just around the time of the publication of her last novel, Birdcage Walk, which I enjoyed very much). The biographic blurb in the flyleaf of this neat, well-presented little novella states proudly that this is "her first ghost story," and I think that shows -- her heart is more in the period detail, both of the early 1950s "now" of the novel, and in the ghostly flashbacks to wartime life, and a forbidden romance.
There are hints that Dunmore had a sense of what the three disparate elements -- the haunting, the time-slip and the romance -- might be pulling toward: there are a couple of lovely, wistful lines, like
"... some things never seem to stop happening, do they?" said Janet Ingoldby quietly.
This line, from a previously unsympathetic character -- almost a cardboard cut-out, only there to prey on the anxieties and self-doubt of Isabel, the main character -- suggests that Isabel isn't the only one who might be haunted. But nothing comes of that. For me, nothing comes of much, really.
