On the whole I quite enjoyed this gentle, heart-warming story, but not nearly as much as the other Shute novels I’ve read. Howard must make his way as best he can, and as he goes he finds himself collecting other children of various nationalities to take to safety. But the German invasion is happening faster than he expected and soon the transport system of the country collapses. Howard is hesitant – he may have been a father but he’s never had to look after young children by himself. An English couple at his hotel can’t leave for England straight away and beg him to take their two young children with him. He realises he has to head home while he still can.
Once there, he learns that the German Blitzkrieg has begun and it looks like France will soon fall. So feeling a little lost he decides to take a holiday in France (in the middle of a war, as you do). His son has been killed in the Battle of Heligoland Bight and his daughter now lives in the US with her husband. It’s 1940 and elderly John Howard is feeling useless because no one wants his service in the war effort. "He write (in this touching book) about human beings and ordinary human emotions in a way that makes the reading of each page an unalloyed pleasure" **. "moving, heart-warming - (Nevil Shute's) greatest novel" **.
"piles up dramatic force - the work of a master storyteller" **. Mostly love.īook-reviewers called it "the best story of World War II" **. The dangers of death and war remain in the reader's heart, along with the resounding echoes of courage, honesty, love. The story ends in a surprisingly gratifying way.
Along the way, he finds another child, and another, and another, leading his young outcasts through shell-fire and sacrifice, in a search of safe haven from a world at war.Ī poignant sub-plot shows why this man had left England in perilous times, and how he found in France a woman who healed this poignancy (and, in the process, her own personal sorrow). When Germany invades France, he decides to go back to England, and is asked to take the children with him. To amuse two children he's met, he makes a whistle from a twig of hazel bush. 70-year-old Englishman goes fishing in the French mountains, near the Swiss border. Young Adult Novel, set in Europe in 1940.
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