View source for Silent Night by Charles Ellingworth

{{infobox1
|title=Silent Night
|author=Charles Ellingworth
|reviewer=Louise Laurie
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=This debut novel centres around two young women - one from Germany and one from France - as the Second World War causes its havoc.  Ellingworth digs deep into their different characters as they try and live through (almost) unspeakable horrors, secrets and lies.
|rating=4.5
|buy=Yes
|borrow=Yes
|pages=312
|publisher=Quartet Books
|date=November 2010
|isbn=978-0704372122
|cover=0704372126
|aznuk=0704372126
|aznus=0704372126
}}

The front cover describes this book as ''astonishing'' and has ''the mark of a classic.''  We're introduced to one of the two female characters, Mimi:  a young, German woman.  It's 1944 in Eastern Germany and if I say that things are grim, I'm sure you'll appreciate that it is an understatement.  Mimi is obviously an intelligent and curious individual and she's certainly not happy to be living in the back-of-beyond.  But then again, things could be ten times worse for her.  She could be living in Berlin picking through the rubble.  Out of the blue, she encounters a man - a French national, as it happens and things change dramatically.  We learn that along with his fellow countrymen, Mimi's husband is absent, not at home.  So when she acknowledges her attraction for another man - and someone who is not German at that, she seems exhilarated, shocked and perhaps just a little repelled, all at the same time.
 
And this whirlwind of conflicting emotions is a recurring thread in the novel.  It works.  It makes all of Ellingworth's central characters human, flawed and - paradoxically - alive and half-dead at the same time.  And as Mimi tries to settle unto an uneasy and stressful way of domestic life 'with the prisoners' you can almost feel her unease.  But at the same time, there's a level of human dignity which is rather humbling, with sentences such as ''It was an egalitarian meal of pork and turnips in the bowels of the house ...''  Ellingworth deftly and cleverly brings in the classic book ''Madame Bovary'' which is discussed and mulled over at length between Mimi and her attractive Frenchman.  There is no escaping some interesting parallels between fiction and real-life.
 
There is also no escaping the fact that Germany is at war.  The reader is given a blow-by-blow account of a (British) bombing raid on German residents.  Ellingworth does not over-sensationalise the horrors but nor does he skim over them either.  His measured and strangely poetic narrative is attractive.  The results for me were often moving and thought-provoking.  I don't know about you but most of the books I've read regarding the second world war have dealt with issues from the British perspective.  Ellingworth dares to be different and I appreciated that.
 
The reader also meets the other central female character, Marie-Louise as we go back in time a little, to 1940s France.  There are strong similarities between the two women, right from the outset.  Marie-Louise is also living a strange life in limbo.  She comes across as a rather naive woman with simple pleasures and tastes.  But the war has thrown heady characters in her path.  She starts to engage in debate and give her opinion.  She also starts to question her life so far - has she made the right choices?  And as the sexual attraction is ramped up for Marie-Louise and her young man, she is truly living for the moment.
 
You'd perhaps think that these coincidences wouldn't work.  And perhaps not with a less skilful writer.  But in Ellingworth's hands, I believed the characters and I also cared about their lives.  And even given the subject matter of war and all its ugly brutality, this is a beautifully written book.  It left me thinking about what atrocities man can do to his fellow man.  And after I had closed the book on the final chapter, the characters were still with me.  In essence, this book captures in flowing prose the things that the human spirit is capable of taking on board.  Highly recommended.

I'd like to thank the publishers for sending a copy to The Bookbag.
 
If this book appeals then you might enjoy [[A Winding Road by Jonathan Tulloch]] or [[The Zookeeper's War by Steven Conte]].

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