I have mixed feelings about this book.

The style of writing is a pleasure to read, it flows and the descriptions are vivid. The author brings alive the American reporters attempts to make the American’s back home understand the horror that what was going on in England and in Europe during the early period of WW2, before Pearl Harbor.

But the main issue Blake seems to be dealing with is whether there is some order to the chaos of war, whether or not there is someone up there watching out for us or all that happens to us is random. And she rams this down your throat with intensity.

This is one of the books where I feel the author counts pages. Every seven pages (or maybe it is eight) something sensual or romantic must be mentioned.  Every ten pages the major questions must be asked again – does it all add up? Is someone watching over us? is there ryhme and reason during war time?

I’ve read a large number of novels about the same period, written by authors from different countries. Many of them certainly made me think of these questions and other moral issues, without being so explicit about it. It is if the author wasn’t sure we, the readers, could figure it out on our own and she needed to spell it out for us, repeatedly, throughout the book. Its a shame because the book could have been better.

Nonetheless, I certainly didn’t want to abandon ship and had to read to the end!