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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Sep 2004, 384 pages
Paperback:
Sep 2005, 384 pages
Book Reviewed by:
BookBrowse Review Team
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Comment: There are plenty of books about war told from an adult perspective but not
nearly so many from the viewpoint of children, and fewer still that are written
for adult readers from a child's point of view.
Set in Germany, France and North Africa just before and during World War II, we
see the war through the eyes of a young Jewish girl and a boy who struggles with
his place in the Hitler Youth. Ilse is the 13 year old daughter of a Jewish
father and Christian mother, both Germans. When war breaks out she's sent away
by her mother to live with her uncle Willy in Morocco, who becomes more of a
father to her than her own father has ever been. However, when Germany
invades France, Willy rejoins the French Foreign Legion and Ilse is sent to
Paris to live with her father who, as a vocal but somewhat ineffectual
Bolshevik, has fled Germany to avoid the Gestapo's net. Ilse's mother,
Lore, takes a job as a nursemaid and nanny for a high-ranking family in Hamburg,
where she agonizes over the decisions she's made and wonders if she will ever
see her daughter again. One of her charges is Nicolai, a boy the same age
as Ilse, who finds himself increasingly uncomfortable with his position of
privilege, and his family's (and thus his own assumed) loyalty to the Nazi
party.
I found The Children's War to be a very compelling read; Charlesworth
really gets inside the heads of her characters, who have to grow up so
quickly, and through them she conveys both the terror
of war and the unvarnished banality of day to day survival. The book
covers a lot of ground - from the bombings
of Hamburg (at the time the heaviest assault in the history of aerial
warfare) to the students of the military academy at Saumur in France
who, having been taught to uphold the highest codes of honor, held a
bridge against the German advance for a full day, while the people of
their town stoned them from behind, so that they would surrender faster
and spare the town.
This review
first ran in the September 14, 2005
issue of BookBrowse Recommends.
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