I bought Nella Last’s War for research for my current novel-in-progress. I ended up reading it for the pure joy of it. The record of a middle-aged woman’s experiences during WW2 in a northern shipbuilding town didn’t promise the insights into the fabric of her society, her personal life, and the beautiful prose with which these are delivered.
Nella writes beautifully – for example, her untidy lounge room looks like ‘it has been stirred with a spoon’, and her descriptions of her favourite resting places on the shores of Lake Coniston would do any novelist proud.
Find Nella Last’s War here
But it’s the way in which she thinks and how she expresses those thoughts which totally captured me. This is not only about what is going on in the war – at the local level with her busy volunteering work, at the national level where the stupidity of men in power has her wailing at times, and abroad where her compassion for all those caught in the madness (on all sides) has her crying in her sleep. Nella also ponders the consequences – will women be happy to be put back into their homes and told to once more defer to these men who have proved to have such feet of clay? Will the returning soldiers ever be the same? What about this atomic bomb? Nella has an uneasy feeling about it.
An intelligent, articulate and considerate woman, whose diary was a joy to read. AND it has given me so many little homely details to scatter in my own work as well issues to have my protagonist perhaps ponder herself. Highly recommended.
More reviews here and my monthly round up of what I’ve read here.