A few months ago our Penguin rep handed me a book that I ended up devouring over the next weekend: 22 Britannia Road by Amanda Hodgkinson. I have been waiting and waiting on the pub date, which is almost here! Attention literary readers, especially those who loved The Invisible Bridge and The Glass Room, for you all are in for another real treat!
Set in Poland during WWII and then after the war in an English shipping village, 22 Britannia Road cries out for recognition of the devastating and long lasting effects upon a war torn country and its inhabitants, especially those women and children who were left behind as their young husbands patriotically fled to be war heroes.
Rather than suffering another deplorable personal episode with a German soldier, beautiful Silvana grabs her young son and flees to the Polish countryside where they learn to live as peasants and find their food and shelter in the forests. As the narrator develops the twists and turns of the years in which they live in the wild, the reader wonders if they will actually get out alive. Of course, they do,or the story would have ended, but Silvana and her, almost feral, young son have been altered permanently, especially emotionally and psychologically.
Jump forward to the end of the war when Silvana and seven year old Aurek arrive in England, met at the train station by her husband, Janusz, who did remarkably survive the war, and has been living at 22 Britannia Road for some time hoping to get his wife and son back from Poland.
Building upon a long ago memory of a special love before the war, the small family tries to reattach the emotional bonds, often failing miserably. When a third party enters the mix, sparks fly, but the “fire” comes when the truth about the young son emerges. The deep kept secret has all along been known by the reader, but watching how it plays out with the husband makes this novel all the more enticing and charismatic.
A debut novel, 22 Britannia Road will make waves, I predict. Authored by a young English woman born in Burnham-on-Sea, the fast moving novel captures the emotions and personalities of each character beautifully. Amanda Hodgkinson, who currently lives with her husband and daughters in a farmhouse in southern France, will be receiving awards, I’m sure, for this splendid novel. She received her MA in creative writing from the University of East Anglia.
22 Britannia Road goes on sale Thursday, April 18th. -Nan
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