27 July 2015

Review #285: Crooked Heart: A Novel by Lissa Evans



My rating: 5 of 5 stars



“Friendship is born at that moment when one man says to another: "What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . ."”


----C.S. Lewis




Lissa Evans, an English writer, pens a heart-touching historical fiction, Crooked Heart: A Novel about unusual friendships set against the vivid and honest backdrop in London during the world war II, when Germany was constantly dropping off bombs over the city of London.




Synopsis:

When Noel Bostock—aged ten, no family—is evacuated from London to escape the Nazi bombardment, he lands in a suburb northwest of the city with Vera Sedge—a thirty-six-year old widow drowning in debts and dependents. Always desperate for money, she’s unscrupulous about how she gets it.

Noel’s mourning his godmother Mattie, a former suffragette. Wise beyond his years, raised with a disdain for authority and an eclectic attitude toward education, he has little in common with other children and even less with the impulsive Vee, who hurtles from one self-made crisis to the next. The war’s provided unprecedented opportunities for making money, but what Vee needs—and what she’s never had—is a cool head and the ability to make a plan.

On her own, she’s a disaster. With Noel, she’s a team.

Together, they cook up a scheme. Crisscrossing the bombed suburbs of London, Vee starts to make a profit and Noel begins to regain his interest in life. But there are plenty of other people making money out of the war—and some of them are dangerous. Noel may have been moved to safety, but he isn’t actually safe at all.



Noel, a 10 year old boy's journey begins at Hampstead as an orphan hence living with his cousin god-mother, Mattie, who was a suffragette. But due to her memory loss and the raging war took a toll on her thus turning already orphan Noel into an evacuee who had to leave behind his only relatives in Hampstead to a safer suburb in St. Alban's, where he became a part of the Sedge family consisting of a strong, often ridiculous and always a mean woman when it comes to getting her hands on extra money by hook or crook, Vera and her lazy son, Donald and her sick mother who ocassionaly wrote letters to Winston Churchill in order to participate in the war in some way, Flora. Noel's arrival, who happens to work with a slight limp due to polio, in Vera's life turned out to be a boon as she could ask for money from door-to-door for her numerous charity scum, on the other hand, Noel gradually began to like Vee's mean ways of tricking people into giving money for her charity. Together the pair braces the war-raged city of London from one suburb to another in order to run their charity, but will this war, which also threatens to take away not only the social, economic as well as political well being of a human being but also the heart of a human being, be able to tear apart this unusual yet undying bond of friendship between a woman and an orphan boy?


The writing is fantastic layered as well as mixed with deep emotions, which has an ability to tug the readers' heart strings. The narrative is absolutely engaging layered with dark humor and wit with Vee's comical narrative as well as demeanor. The prose is evocative and the author has vividly captured the essence of a particular location through her story.

The timeline as well as the backdrop both are strikingly portrayed thus falling in sync with the story of Vee and Noel. London and it's suburbs back during the second world war is carefully and distinctly arrested in to the background thus making the readers feel like they are tele-ported back in time. Each and every street in London during the air raid as well as the resulting chaos are perfectly captured and when these two characters walk through that chaos, it will make the readers feel like they too are challenging the war to find a way to their living.

The main characters, especially, Noel and Vee, are drawn with enough realism. Noel's intuitive as well as bibliophilic nature will keep the readers glued to the storyline, whereas Vee's wit will make the readers go LOL at times. The rest of the characters are too strikingly and strongly developed and make their presence felt deeply in the story as some of the supporting characters are etched out with lots of back story, thus providing depth to their demeanor.

The theme is war and friendship and how people used to survive or make a living in the war. It is surprising to see that most people used to trick others into giving money to them for some vague and unreal reason and everyone was involved in some kind of illegal business to make some extra cash during the war.

Vee had debts of her own and to survive herself and her family from those debts she used Noel, a crippled boy, to become her ally in order to help her collect money from people by lying, and it seems Noel too used to enjoy the way he used to help Vee and gradually in a race against the war to survive and support, these two become not just friends but more than that, which doesn't ask for sympathy from the readers but makes their hearts fill with joy and love.

In short, this a poignant as well as witty historical fiction where the author has successfully as well as brilliantly depicted the dark side of the war in London, where survival meant the only thing.

Verdict: Historical fiction fans will love to read this one.

Courtesy: Thanks to the author, Lissa Evans, for providing me with an ARC of her book, in return for an honest review. 
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Author Info:
After a brief career in medicine, and an even briefer one in stand-up, Lissa Evans became a comedy producer, first in radio and then in television. She co-created Room 101 with Nick Hancock, produced Father Ted, and co-produced and directed The Kumars at Number 42. Her first novel, Spencer’s List, was published in 2002. Lissa Evans lives in north London.
Visit her here


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