Just Finished Reading: The Lie by Helen Dunmore (FP: 2014)

Cornwall, England 1920. It wasn’t easy growing up poor. Forced to drop out of school early to earn money, Danny is found a job as under-gardener at the house of Mr Dennis, a wealthy businessman. There he meets and befriends Frederick, the wayward son and his younger sister Felicia. Soon the boys become inseparable much to the annoyance of Frederick’s father. For Danny it is the gateway to another world, where people are warm in winter and where there is always enough to eat. It is also a world of books and knowledge of far flung places. In a library hardly entered never mind used by the family Danny finds an escape from his hard life in the classic works of the ages. But childhood can’t last forever. Frederick is sent off to school and Danny must work for a living to support himself and his widowed mother. As the two boys approach and then reach manhood war arrives and both are sent to France to end up in the same trench but miles apart. For Frederick is an officer, recently put under a cloud by a disastrous attack on an enemy position that left many of his men dead whilst Danny is just trying to stay alive and anonymous in his unit.

With the war at an end Danny returns to his home town on the Cornish coast knowing that his mother is dead and there is, in fact, nothing for him to return to. But he has to go somewhere away from strangers who neither understand nor want to understand what he has been through. Plagued by nightmares and haunted by the ghost of Frederick standing at the base of his bed each night he is invited to stay in the cottage of an old woman who takes pity on him. With her death from natural causes Danny has a choice – report her death to the authorities with all of the questioning and whispering that will entail or pretend that his benefactor is too ill to be seen and live in peace on the outskirts of town. But as lie is laid upon lie and future plans are put in jeopardy and Danny takes the opportunity to run before his lie is uncovered.

After my promise some time ago to turn my eye more towards WW1 in both fiction and non-fiction I was feeling that I had been neglecting things much more than I should. This short novel, only a little over 290 pages long, seemed an ideal way to start addressing that neglect. As with these things I picked this book up because it looked interesting and was reasonably cheap. I admit I was impressed. The feel of the book is generally excellent and has a great resonance about it. Danny and Frederick are both well drawn and interesting characters (particularly Danny) and I had a lot of sympathy for his childhood, his dashed dreams of a proper education and his love for books only satisfied by someone else’s neglected library. More sympathy was due because of his mental state on return from France and his bouts of ‘shell shock’ – clearly suffering from PTSD – where disturbingly real. The author had clearly done her homework on the condition to make things feel very real indeed. The only issue (not profound enough to call it a problem) I had with the whole thing was how the story ended. It felt rushed and rather out of character to much that went before. After enjoying the previous 275+ pages the last 20 rather disappointed me. However, this is still, by and large, a well written novel about a difficult subject. There are some very emotional passages and the author can certainly create very believable characters and situations. I shall look forward to more of her work in future. Much more WW1 to come. Recommended.