Starred review from April 3, 1995
As in her earlier novels, Shreve (Eden Close) affectingly explores themes of love and loss with piercing clarity, once again capturing the fragile emotions of those in pain. Here, however, she moves from her customary domestic, contemporary milieu to WWII Europe--to the Belgian village of Delahaut, where young Claire Daussois and her husband, Henri, are members of an underground resistance movement. When a British plane goes down outside the town in December 1943, the plucky 10-year-old Jean Benoit finds a survivor, Ted Brice, hides him in his father's barn and then summons the aid of Mme. Daussois. As she has done with other refugees, Claire shelters the 22-year-old captain in her attic. When it becomes necessary for Henri to go into hiding, Claire and Ted embark on a brief affair, a passionate liaison made more poignant by its simultaneous inevitability and futility. With deceptive simplicity and superb control, Shreve evokes the impersonal horrors of wartime and its heartbreaking personal tragedies--often combining those elements to almost overwhelming effect, as when Jean witnesses the execution of several townspeople as reprisal for their resistance activities.
December 1, 1995
YA-In December 1943, an American fighter plane is downed near a small village in Belgium. The pilot, Lt. Ted Brice, is rescued by a member of the local resistance movement. As he is hidden in the small attic at the home of Claire Daussois, he becomes acutely aware of the danger to himself as well as his hostess and her husband. A bond develops between Claire and Ted during his 20-day stay that changes both of their lives forever. Through this fast-paced novel, YAs will gain insight into the unthinkable horrors of World War II-German retribution, village collaborators, and local resistance workers. Shreve describes the landscape and the local residents in such detail that readers will quickly become involved in the lives of the characters.-Roberta Lisker, W.T. Woodson High School, Fairfax, VA
April 1, 1995
This story of impossible love was perhaps easy for Shreve to outline, but a challenge to fill out in detail. That she carries it through successfully retains her extant fans (e.g., "Where or When," 1993), and snags as well readers piqued by novels featuring Nazi hellhounds. They're after Ted Brice, a downed B-17 pilot who finds succor and more from an unhappily married Belgian woman, Claire, who furnishes a safe house for the resistance. After hesitant preliminaries, the lovers love in Shreve's tender rendering, but their idyll shatters with Brice's inevitable attempt to escape the hounds milling about. He is betrayed to the Gestapo, but the mystery of how hangs until 50 years later, when Shreve brings together the lovechild of the liaison with an elderly Claire, who reveals the secret of her husband's betrayal of the American. Shreve's strength is constructing the mood and texture of little intimacies, and, set against the huge context of Nazi occupation, they seem all the more worthwhile, however fleeting. A touching tome from a skilled pen. ((Reviewed Apr. 1, 1995))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1995, American Library Association.)