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The New Mrs Clifton by Elizabeth Buchan (view source)
Revision as of 08:58, 3 September 2020
, 08:58, 3 September 2020no edit summary
|reviewer= Luke Marlowe
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary= A fantastically fantastic portrait of life in the years following the Second World War, ''The New Mrs Clifton'' thrills as much as it moves. Brilliantly drawn characters live and breathe against a dangerous, murky and downtrodden London in this truly superb new novel from Elizabeth Buchan
|rating=5
|buy=Yes
|isbn=978-0718184063
|website=http://elizabethbuchan.com/
|cover=0718184068
|aznuk=0718184068
It's a tough choice, but if I think very, very hard, my absolute favourite topic for a book is ''Women in the years following WWII''. It's such a fascinating time, filled with shifting political and social views, and a whole generation of women struggling to find a place in a world that was trying desperately to pretend that the war, and with it a whole new freedom for women, ever happened. So it's rather thrilling that this is the focus of Elizabeth Buchan's new novel.
It's a read that's packed with twists - character decisions and revelations left me gasping throughout, but all are cleverly seeded. Starting the book with the discovery of a body in the 1970's 1970s left me on tenterhooks throughout, and the revelation is reserved until the very end of the book - yet is still a massive surprise. The characters are taken on fascinating journeys to very different places - from the upmarket clubs of West London, through to the devastation of war time wartime Berlin.
The characters are so, so superbly drawn, vivid and real and raw in their emotions. Despite some having views that feel relatively unpleasant, you soon come to understand the situation that they're in, and feel a certain empathy for them. Krista is possibly the most compelling – broken, scarred and learning to live again in a country filled with people who hate her and her kind. It had a particular poignancy for me, as I live in the area where the book is set, and walk past locations from it every single day. In addition, my great grandparents were Gerrman Jews who moved to London in the late 1930's. The hate and persecution they faced every day was so bad that they ended up moving out of the city to the countryside – so the descriptions of the abuse and general social ignorance shown to Krista throughout were a fascinating insight for me.
A superbly plotted book that manages to thrill whilst developing fantastic characters and shedding light on the ever -changing social situation of the times, ''The New Mrs Clifton'' is an incredible read, and one I hugely recommend, so many thanks to the publishers for the copy. For future reading, I recommend[[Everyone Brave Is Forgiven by Chris Cleave]] – another stunning novel that explores the impact of war on those left behind to face its horrific consequences. We also have a review of [[I Can't Begin to Tell You by Elizabeth Buchan]].
{{toptentext|list=Top Ten Historical Fiction Books of 2016}}