Synopsis
As the war rages in Europe, Miranda Whittaker and Nat Ellenberg, two English women, find friendship together, but a tragic accident involving Miranda and Nat's baby sister could destroy their bond
Reviews
This lightweight but appealing romance, English writer Gardiner's debut, opens in 1936 in England, when its two heroines, Miranda Whittaker and Natalie Ellenberg, are 14; at its conclusion they are 60. Gardiner traces the vicissitudes of their friendship as it is affected by the events of the turbulent era in which they mature. Natalie, Jewish and a gifted pianist, goes to Paris to study with Nadia Boulanger. She stays too long, is picked up by the Gestapo and sent to Saint-Denis, Drancy and finally Auschwitz. Miranda, widowed soon after her marriage, becomes a Red Cross volunteer. Trained as a medic, she is sent to Europe with a team eventually assigned to Auschwitz, where she finds her old friend near death, saves her life and gets her back to England. Gardiner's style is better suited to describing Natalie's love affair in a Paris attic than the horrors of Auschwitz. She does a creditable job, however, of conveying British class differences--especially through revealing dialogue between Miranda and her not-quite-respectable mother.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
A simple romantic tale, sagging with message, featuring the friendship of two Englishwomen--one from a kind and cultured Jewish family, the other the product of a middling poor, dippy, but good- hearted mother and a permanently absent (maybe dead, maybe not) dad. During WW II, anti-Semitism will take its toll. Miranda Whittaker, daughter of flitty Flo--who's apt to change her accounts of the death of Miranda's father to the increasingly exotic--meets Natalie Ellenberg for the first time in their Liverpool school, where the two become fast chums. But it's in 1936 that Miranda also first catches the stench of anti-Semitism when Flo's boyfriend turns out to be an English Nazi. Meanwhile, Miranda loves Natalie's family and adores baby Rachel. Then, however, the baby is tragically killed in a street row, and Miranda is haunted for years by the fear that she's been responsible. War rumbles, and Natalie, a gifted pianist, goes to Paris to study. There, she not only meets the love of her life but, later, she will suffer and come very near death in a camp. At home in England, Miranda-- married to charming, older, and (conveniently) dying Emry--joins the Red Cross, travels to Germany as the war ends, and finds.... At the close, there's a reunion at Miranda's 60th--while a band of Nazi Neanderthals whoop it up in the park across the street. So evil goes on. A well-intentioned first novel built around a worthwhile message--but the characters are as predictable as the plot. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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