Veena’s review of Secrets Of A Charmed Life by Susan Meissner
Historical Literature published by Nal 03 Feb 15
I knew intellectually that London was bombed by the Nazi’s in World War II, but this book brought forth London and the fate of its people during the blitz in vivid emotional detail. I actually felt like I lived it. The writing is superb such that it took me a while to surface once I got sucked into 1940 London as Isobel McFarland began to speak. I felt Emmy’s emotions as she rebelled against being treated like a child and her burning desire to fuel her ambitions at any cost. I wanted to call out and warn Emmy as she and Julia boarded the train to London on that fateful day, unknowing of how that it would change their lives forever. I read feverishly into the dark as I couldn’t bear to put the book down, thankful that I was reading it on Kindle so I didn’t need to stop to turn the lights on.
The book tracks Emmy’s life from her teenage years right into her nineties. As a teenager Emmy, the product of a teenage pregnancy, living with her mother has the desire to design and create wedding dresses. She seems to have the talent for it as well, as evidenced by her apprenticeship to a wedding boutique in her part of London. The owner has a cousin who is a designer and promises to share some of Emmy’s sketches with her cousin, who designs costumes, to enable Emmy to progress and learn the trade. Sixteen-year-old Emmy chafes at having to care for her young half-sister Julia, particularly when the two of them are shipped away to the countryside while London is under the threat of a Nazi bombing. Mad with ambition and blind to everything else, Emmy determines to return to London and pursue her own ambitions right into the face of the Nazi bombers on that fateful day in September. At the end of that day her life is destroyed as thoroughly as her London neighborhood under the attack.
Emmy emerges from the darkness a changed person, not only in personality but in identity, having assumed another’s. She’s lived a full life, as evidenced by the full house and family and friends milling around her as she celebrates her ninetieth birthday, when she finally breaks her silence to talk about that fateful time when she survived the blitz. I like how the story is divided almost in two distinct parts. Emmy’s story and then Julia’s journal. I am not super emotional, but tears were running down my cheeks as I read the letters and how close the two sisters were at different points in time, unable to connect with each other.
Ms. Meissner is an amazing story teller who’ll keep you riveted from start to finish. A definite must read from a new-to-me author.
Grade: A+
Summary:
The author of A Fall of Marigolds journeys from the present day to World War II England, as two sisters are separated by the chaos of wartime …
She stood at a crossroads, half-aware that her choice would send her down a path from which there could be no turning back. But instead of two choices, she saw only one—because it was all she really wanted to see…
Current day, Oxford, England. Young American scholar Kendra Van Zant, eager to pursue her vision of a perfect life, interviews Isabel McFarland just when the elderly woman is ready to give up secrets about the war that she has kept for decades…beginning with who she really is. What Kendra receives from Isabel is both a gift and a burden–one that will test her convictions and her heart.
1940s, England. As Hitler wages an unprecedented war against London’s civilian population, hundreds of thousands of children are evacuated to foster homes in the rural countryside. But even as fifteen-year-old Emmy Downtree and her much younger sister Julia find refuge in a charming Cotswold cottage, Emmy’s burning ambition to return to the city and apprentice with a fashion designer pits her against Julia’s profound need for her sister’s presence. Acting at cross purposes just as the Luftwaffe rains down its terrible destruction, the sisters are cruelly separated, and their lives are transformed…
No excerpt available.
