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Book Summary and Reviews of The Evening Chorus by Helen Humphreys

The Evening Chorus by Helen Humphreys

The Evening Chorus

by Helen Humphreys

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  • Published:
  • Feb 2015, 304 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

Downed during his first mission, James Hunter is taken captive as a German POW. To bide the time, he studies a nest of redstarts at the edge of camp. Some prisoners plot escape; some are shot. And then, one day, James is called to the Kommandant's office.

Meanwhile, back home, James's new wife, Rose, is on her own, free in a way she has never known. Then, James's sister, Enid, loses everything during the Blitz and must seek shelter with Rose. In a cottage near Ashdown forest, the two women jealously guard secrets, but form a surprising friendship. Each of these characters will find unexpected freedom amid war's privations and discover confinements that come with peace. The Evening Chorus is a beautiful, astonishing examination of love, loss, escape, and the ways in which the intrusions of the natural world can save us.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Starred Review. An ingeniously elegant and instinctively restrained tale about the durability of the human spirit." - Booklist

"Starred Review. Humphreys deserves more recognition for the emotional intensity and evocative lyricism of her seemingly straightforward prose and for her ability to quietly squirrel her way into the reader's heart." - Kirkus

This information about The Evening Chorus was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

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Author Information

Helen Humphreys

Helen Humphreys' novels include several New York Times Notable Books of the Year. Among other awards, she has received the Lambda Prize for fiction and was longlisted for the Dublin Impac. She has written four books of poetry, six novels, and two works of creative non-fiction.

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