WORLD WAR II BOOK LIST (5 of 6) (updated 5/15/2016)

1) Diaries/Memoirs

2) Fiction: The Approach of War and Early Days

3) Fiction: The Thick of It

4) Fiction: The Immediate Postwar

5) Fiction: Retrospective (post-1950)

6) Other Non-fiction

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Fiction: Retrospective (published after 1950)

Thanks to everyone who made suggestions on part four of my list. I have several more books to read now because of you. Please do keep the suggestions coming, as this part undoubtedly needs your help as well.

It might seem odd at first to divide fiction set during World War II into that actually written during or immediately after the war and that written even just a few years later and on up to recent years. And perhaps it is just my own idiosyncrasy (please feel free to tell me if you think it’s just my book-addled brain getting carried away…).

But it does seem to me that there is a real difference in tone and perspective between those books which came directly out of the turmoils, traumas, and day-to-day realities of the war, and those which I’ve called retrospective, which seem to approach the war in a more reflective way, with the benefit of hindsight and knowledge of the outcome—which are, in some cases, even in the early 1950s, basically historical fiction re-imagining wartime life for their authors’ particular literary purposes, rather than tales primarily focused on uncertainty and survival. It’s hard to put one’s finger on exactly how these variations are reflected in the texts, but I imagine the same distinction applies to any historical event: books written during the Victorian period are certainly different from books of the 1940s which are merely set during Victoria’s reign (just think of the difference between Charlotte Yonge’s view of the Victorian family and Ivy Compton-Burnett’s!). 

It’s also hard to place a definite dividing line between retrospective works and those that are more immediate or direct. There are always grey areas. But 1950 seemed like a convenient line to draw. Certainly, Elizabeth Bowen’s The Heat of the Day, published in 1948, manages to capture an immediacy and urgency that’s already long lost by the time Olivia Manning tackles her distinctly historical Fortunes of War trilogies starting in 1960. And there are several important novels written during the war that were only published in the years after it ended, such as Marghanita Laski’s To Bed with Grand Music, Norah Hoult’s House Under Mars, and Stella Gibbons’ Westwood. If the line is to be drawn, it must be drawn somewhere, so, for this list, 1950 it is.

If you want to feel very overwhelmed very quickly by the vast array of more recent historical fiction set during World War II, have a gander at this site, which may give you lots of new reading material. For my purposes, however, this section of the list is limited to books by authors who qualify for my Overwhelming List (i.e., if you haven’t perused that list lately, British women who published fiction during the years 1910-1960). Thus, Elizabeth Jane Howard’s Cazalets series, the final volume of which only appeared in 2013, is listed here, while dozens of other titles published earlier than that but by younger authors are not included.

Elizabeth Jane Howard

This is certainly an idiosyncrasy that comes of my own interests: Because my main interest is in those authors who experienced these years first-hand, I’m interested in a 2013 novel by an author who began publishing in 1950, but not so much in a 1980 novel by an author who started publishing in 1975 (however marvelous the 1980 novel might be). An idiosyncrasy, for sure, but hopefully one that makes some kind of sense from the perspective of the heyday of the women’s middlebrow novel. And it certainly makes my list shorter and more manageable than it would otherwise have been (I couldn’t have fathomed attempting a list of all WWII-related novels, even just by British women writers—overwhelming indeed!).

On the other hand, since their author doesn’t qualify in any way, shape, or form for this list, I will take this opportunity to mention two of my very favorite books concerned with the World War II home front in Britain. Connie Willis is American, too young to have experienced the war first hand (born on New Year’s Eve, 1945), and only began publishing in the 1970s, but I couldn’t stop reading Blackout and All Clear (2010), her two epic novels (really one big giant novel) about several time travelling historians from 2060 who venture into the Blitz (and other hot spots of the war) for research purposes and find themselves trapped there by complications with their time portals and the laws of physics. There are some naysayers bothered by anachronisms and Americanisms in Willis’s portrayal of the war, but however true this might be (I’m probably not the best judge of either), it’s also true that they’re vivid and page-turning and probably did more to stir up interest in the home front among general readers than a dozen riveting Imperial War Museum exhibitions. So, I encourage you to read them, but they are not, of course, included in my list below.

Since the list is so short, it’s somewhat anti-climactic to choose my five favorites from this section (I’ve only read about 7 of the books shown, so the competition isn’t fierce), but what the hey, here they are:

FURROWED MIDDLEBROW'S FIVE FAVORITE RETROSPECTIVE NOVELS OF WORLD WAR II

BRYHER, Beowulf (1956)

OLIVIA MANNING, The Balkan Trilogy (1960-1965)
MURIEL SPARK, The Girls of Slender Means (1963)
GERALDINE SYMONS - Now and Then (1977, aka Crocuses Were Over, Hitler Was Dead)
LAURA TALBOT, The Gentlewomen (1952)

Bryher’s underrated novel—richly deserving of a reprint—is truly one of my favorites, while Symon’s book, a time slip tale about a lonely girl in a big country house who finds herself flickering back and forth between the dull present of the 1970s and the house’s far more eventful wartime past, has haunted me ever since I stumbled across it as a child. (And by the way, this is one of the only examples I know of where an American title is actually better than the British original. The crocuses in the novel are a kind of marker that allow the reader, as well as the girl herself, to realize which time she is in.) A part of me wouldn’t mind slipping back in time to the war years for a week or two, though I’d like to be terribly selective about the exact time and location of my slippage (and be more certain of the functionality of my portals than Connie Willis' historians can be)…

What am I missing this time around?

R E T R O S P E C T I V E   W O R K S
	MABEL ESTHER ALLAN, Time to Go Back (1972)
		Popular author’s tale of a young girl in Liverpool who travels back in time to witness her mother and aunt’s tragic past.
	LUCILLA ANDREWS, One Night in London (1979)
	LUCILLA ANDREWS, After a Famous Victory (1984)
	LUCILLA ANDREWS, The Phoenix Syndrome (1987)
	LUCILLA ANDREWS, Frontline 1940 (1990)
		Pressured to remove wartime themes from her early novels, romance novelist Andrews returned to the war in these late works.
	BERYL BAINBRIDGE, The Dressmaker (1973)
		Set in Liverpool during the war, this novel focuses on a young woman living with her two aunts.
	NINA BAWDEN, Carrie's War (1973)
		Acclaimed children’s book about the evacuation of a young girl and her brother to a Welsh village during World War II and the effect their stay has on her later life.
	ANN BRIDGE, A Place to Stand (1953)
	ANN BRIDGE, The Tightening String (1962)
		Popular novelist’s tales of Hungary in wartime.
	BRYHER, Beowulf (1956)
		Powerful “blitz lit” novel detailing the experiences of two women (perhaps not unlike Bryher and her partner, Hilda Doolittle, better known as H.D.) running a tea shop under harsh wartime constraints.
	HESTER BURTON, In Spite of All Terror (1968)
		Children’s novel set during wartime and featuring scenes of evacuation, bombings, and the Dunkirk evacuation.
	BARBARA COMYNS, Mr. Fox (1987)
		Set during the war and based on Comyns' own life after the breakup of her first marriage.
	LETTICE COOPER, Fenny (1953)
		Set before and after the war in Florence, which follows a young girl from her arrival in Italy as a governess through turbulent events both personal and political.
	FANNY CRADOCK, Castle Rising series (1975-1985)
		Eccentric chef and novelist’s popular series tracing a family’s fortunes, including the war years.
	THERESA DE KERPELY (writing as Teresa Kay), A Crown of Ashes (1952)
		Novel based on her wartime experiences living in Budapest, published pseudonymously to protect family members still living in Hungary.
	RACHEL FERGUSON, Sea Front (1954)
		Traces, in Ferguson's eccentric fashion, life in a seaside resort town before, during, and after WWII.
	RUBY FERGUSON, The Wakeful Guest (1962)
		Rather uninspired mystery/melodrama focused on a superficial young woman’s encounters with refugees of war.
	HELEN FOLEY, A Handful of Time (1961)
		A Book Society Choice that deals with two women, one British and one Austrian, from immediately before WWII until "its confused aftermath," set mostly at or in Cambridge, with occasional scenes in Austria.
	SARAH GAINHAM, Night Falls on the City (1967) SARAH GAINHAM, A Place in the Country (1968) SARAH GAINHAM, Private Worlds (1971)
		A trilogy. Night Falls was a bestseller and BOMC selection, set in Vienna during the war. The less acclaimed sequels are set, respectively, soon after the war has ended and in the early 1950s.
	CATHERINE GAVIN, Traitors' Gate (1976) CATHERINE GAVIN, None Dare Call It Treason (1978) CATHERINE GAVIN, How Sleep the Brave (1980)
		Historical novelist’s popular trilogy set in wartime Britain.
	ELIZABETH JANE HOWARD, The Light Years (1990) ELIZABETH JANE HOWARD, Marking Time (1991) ELIZABETH JANE HOWARD, Confusion (1993) ELIZABETH JANE HOWARD, Casting Off (1995) ELIZABETH JANE HOWARD, All Change (2013)
		Howard’s Cazalet Chronicles, her best known and most popular works, which detail a family's experiences in wartime England.
	PAMELA HANSFORD JOHNSON, The Survival of the Fittest (1968)
		Novel tracing a group of friends through the war years.
	MOLLY LEFEBURE, Blitz! (1988)
		The one novel by the author of Evidence for the Crown (1954), a memoir of working in the London morgue during WWII, dramatized a few years ago as Murder on the Home Front.
	ALICE LUNT, Tomorrow the Harvest (1955)
	ALICE LUNT, Eileen of Redstone Farm (1964)
		Children’s stories based on Lunt’s own experiences in the Women's Land Army during World War II.
	OLIVIA MANNING, The Balkan Trilogy (1960-1965)
	OLIVIA MANNING, The Levant Trilogy (1977-1980)
		Two epic trilogies—dramatized for television as Fortunes of War—tracing a young married couple’s lives in the Eastern Europe and the Middle East during the war years.
	ANNE MARRECO (writing as ALICE ACLAND), A Person of Discretion (1958)
		About three sisters from Brussels who get mixed up with the black market and the Resistance movement late in World War II.
	MARY RENAULT, The Charioteer (1953)
		Early portrayal of gay men, dealing with a wounded soldier's triangular relationship with a conscientious objector and a naval officer while in a hospital in the midst of blackout and bombings.
	DOROTHY EVELYN SMITH, He Went for a Walk (1954)
		Children’s book in which a boy made homeless by the Blitz finds his way across wartime England.
	MURIEL SPARK, The Girls of Slender Means (1963)
		Takes place in a London boarding-house for girls during the final days of World War II.
	D. E. STEVENSON, Amberwell (1955)
		About a family and their staff in a country house before and during the war.
	D. E. STEVENSON, Sarah Morris Remembers (1966)
		Story of a woman looking back over her early life, from her childhood in a vicarage to the thick of the Blitz in London.
	NOEL STREATFEILD, Beyond the Vicarage (1971)
		Third volume of Streatfeild's fictionalized memoir, in which "Vicky" becomes an author and joins the WVS during the war.
	NOEL STREATFEILD, When the Sirens Wailed (1974)
		Children's fiction in which Streatfeild returns to her wartime experiences.
	GERALDINE SYMONS - Now and Then (1977, published in the U.S. as Crocuses Were Over, Hitler Was Dead)
		A time-slip story of a girl moving with her family to a country estate and occasionally slipping back into World War II when she befriends a gardener and his dog from those earlier years.
	LAURA TALBOT, The Gentlewomen (1952)
		Novel focused on the disruptions of class identity brought about by World War II.
	GILLIAN TINDALL, The Intruder (1979)
		Novel about a young Englishwoman and her son stuck in occupied France during World War II.