Literary Lodestones

You do not forget the good books that you discover.

Especially if they lead you to poignant emotional moments, and this has been a surprising recent discovery for me, and though until recently I had thought that my literary adventures were over, since I cannot even hold a book nor turn its pages, audio books have had a sudden resurgence thanks to such initiatives as Audible.

I had not even heard of the author of the two books that have recently had such an impact on me.

It is worth me describing briefly how I happened to suddenly discover the first, and thence discover the other.

I find the problem of choosing what to read as much of a difficulty as I ever did.

I was always an avid reader, and when I think back, so many of the good books that I have discovered have come to me almost by accident.

Perhaps this was a semi-conscious decision, when as a very young boy, I realized that it would be impossible for me to read every book in a big library.

And so I prepared myself to discover books by some form of serendipity.

On this occasion, I had quite  simply  chosen to read Max Hastings history of bomber command during the Second World War.

I didn’t expect this overview to be without its controversy, but at least I was partially aware of that controversy. Perhaps it was time that I discovered more.

Even before I settled down to listen to this weighty tome, I chose in addition the first of the two books by Elizabeth Wein that are the principal subject of this article.

The reasoning for this is similarly accidental, in that I was attracted by its title. Code Name Verity.

This suggested some connection with the Second World War, and with a part of it that is of interest to me because it is a component of an extended piece of writing that I have begun. Perhaps, I thought, this might shed some light by way of research on what I am trying to achieve.

And so I did not begin to read Code Name Verity at once, but only after I had completed Max Hastings fascinating book.

I have always found books that involve flight fascinating. I can immediately think of The Little Prince, and Jonathan Livingston Seagull.

The author of Code Name Verity is a pilot herself, and the heroine of the book is a pilot too.

Being set as it is, the protagonist of the story becomes a member of the air transport authority, the only way perhaps that a woman would be able to fly in wartime Britain.

This would almost be sufficient in itself, but an extraordinary tale unfolds when she is introduced to special operations, that secret world of moving people and resources so that they can play an important part in a lesser known aspect of that total war.

I’m not going to explain much of the story as it unfolds, because that should be for an interested reader to discover.

Sufficient to say that having accidentally discovered this book, and being thereby introduced to Rose On Fire as another work by the same author, I have at last come to the work that has so affected me.

Although they are quite distinct works and could be read separately, having read them in the order that I did was important.

In other words, characters appear in both of these books, and there is an important sense of development between them.

The plot of this second book is quite exceptional, and incredibly well handled.

Once again, I won’t go into details, other than to explain that the title character, Rose Justice, is also an air transport pilot, this time American.

Through a carefully balanced plot, she finds herself over France, after the liberation of Paris, and before the end of the war.

She ends up being brought down by two German fighter planes, whilst flying a Spitfire, and of course because it is a transport plane, it is not armed.

She is forced to land at a German airfield, and becomes a captive. As a consequence of which, because she is a woman and a suspected agent, she spends six months in a concentration camp.

She survives, and in giving the authors own background as to how the book came to be written, it is clear that it came about as a consequence of writers workshops which took place at the location of the camp, almost a generation later.

In other words, it is a well researched fictional story, but with an extraordinary connection with the modern day location of that terrible place.

The story is told after she has escaped from the camp with a small group of survivors, and culminates with the end of the war and by no means resolves all of the questions concerning the future of important characters.

But it is a story that in its telling reiterates the importance of its telling, so that we can never forget.

It is rare that I have found a book to be quite so emotionally compelling, and for that reason, it must be recommended.

It isn’t an easy book to read at times, and perhaps that is the mark of a great work.

Certainly a book that for me has been transformative.