This year’s reading challenge is a bit different and as promised each month we’ll give you a list of suggested books for each category. For March I asked the Cwts Discussion Group to recommend “A Novel Set During A War”. The response was once again completely overwhelming, these are just a few of the many that didn’t already feature in one of the many lists we already have over on FRA. I’ve included links to the other lists at the end.
The Things They Carried – Tim O’Brien
‘The Things They Carried’ is, on its surface, a sequence of award-winning stories about the madness of the Vietnam War; at the same time it has the cumulative power and unity of a novel, with recurring characters and interwoven strands of plot and theme.
A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemingway
A Farewell to Arms is the unforgettable story of an American ambulance driver on the Italian front and his passion for a beautiful English nurse. Set against the looming horrors of the battlefield.
The Paris Architect – Charles Belfoure
Architect Lucien Bernard accepts a commission that will bring him huge wealth – and maybe a death sentence.He has to design a secret hiding place for a wealthy Jewish man, a space so invisible that even the most determined of Nazi soldiers won’t discover it.
Mischling – Affinity Konar
It’s 1944 when the twin sisters arrive at Auschwitz with their mother and grandfather. In their benighted new world, Pearl and Stasha Zagorski take refuge in their identical natures, comforting themselves with the private language and shared games of their childhood.
Carrie’s War – Nina Bawden
It is wartime and Carrie and her little brother Nick have been evacuated from their London home to the Welsh hills. In an unfamiliar place, among strangers, the children feel alone and find little comfort with the family they are billeted with: Mr Evans, a bullying shopkeeper and Auntie Lou, his kind but timid sister.
Goodnight Mr Tom – Michelle Magorian
Young Willie Beech is evacuated to the country as Britain stands on the brink of the Second World War. A sad, deprived child, he slowly begins to flourish under the care of old Tom Oakley – but his new-found happiness is shattered by a summons from his mother back in London.
The Narrow Road To The Deep North – Richard Flanagan
In the despair of a Japanese POW camp on the Burma Death Railway, surgeon Dorrigo Evans is haunted by his love affair with his uncle’s young wife two years earlier. Struggling to save the men under his command from starvation, from cholera, from beatings, he receives a letter that will change his life forever.
The Narrow Road to the Deep North US
The Narrow Road to the Deep North UK
The Dust That Falls From Dreams – Louis de Bernieres
In the brief golden years before the outbreak of World War I, Rosie McCosh and her three very different sisters are growing up in an eccentric household in Kent, with their neighbours the Pitt boys on one side and the Pendennis boys on the other. But their days of childhood adventure are shadowed by the approach of the conflict that will engulf them on the cusp of adulthood.
The Dust that Falls from Dreams US
The Dust that Falls from Dreams UK
