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The Other Side of Silence by Sylvie Nickels (view source)
Revision as of 06:57, 6 May 2012
, 06:57, 6 May 2012no edit summary
Pippa Eastman went to Australia to get away from her domineering father, the historian Joseph Eastman and it was there that she met Jude, the son of two Ten Pound Poms. Their relationship was good, but not exactly committed on either side. It was about having fun. Familial ties were surprisingly strong though and when Joseph Eastman developed Alzheimer's Disease Pippa returned to the UK to care for him. Slightly to her surprise, Jude followed her - determined to track down the alcoholic father who had left him and his mother in Australia. It's only after her father's death that Pippa finds herself in search of her father's life - and trying to establish that he wasn't a murderer.
Joseph Eastman had quite a history too. His father was also Joseph Josef - a Russian soldier - and his mother was Finnish. They met at the time of the Finnish-Russian Winter War of 1939 but were not together for long as Joseph Josef sent his wife and child to safety in Sweden and then disappeared - the fate of so many people who found themselves in the wrong place at this dreadful time. Years later Pippa's father would return to Finland and it was the death of a man who might well have informed the authorities about Joseph senior Josef which was thought - probably - to be down to Pippa's father.
Sylvie Nickels knows Finland. She knows the country and she speaks the language. It's easy to tell that the parts of the book set in Finland are written from deep knowledge rather than research. This is an author who knows far, far more than she tells you and there's no sense of someone who needs to shoehorn in every fact she's accumulated. I was mesmerised by the descriptions of the light and I could ''feel'' the climate. I've read quite a bit recently about the late nineteen thirties in Scandinavia and ''The Other Side of Silence'' shone a light into a little-known period of history. I was so involved that I ended up with my old school atlas open so that I could track what had happened.