THE WAR’S NOT OVER YET
1948; the war in Europe has been over for three years – or has it? Because the Russians have the western sectors of Berlin surrounded and tension is running high. Into this nervous situation comes fifteen year-old Freya, with her father, a journalist and one-time refugee from Nazi Germany.
Freya is bored and lonely, and though there is a German boy her own age living in the requisitioned villa where she and her father are quartered, they take an instant dislike to each other. It makes it worse that he’s a gifted musician, and Freya, crazy about jazz, has to admire his piano playing.
In the mostly-ruined city, full of half-starved and traumatised Berliners, Freya becomes haunted by memories of her dead English mother – who she’s been told was killed by a speeding car. But why does her father hate to speak about his wife, and why has her grandmother cut all the pictures of Freya’s mother out of the family photograph album? And why was Freya’s father so put out when he saw who the housekeeper was?
As the Russian grip on Berlin threatens to become a stranglehold, and Freya finds herself trapped along with everyone in West Berlin, her quest to find the answers becomes more urgent. When she does discover the story behind her memories and nightmares, it brings her feelings about her conflicted heritage to a crisis and she almost loses her own life.
This novel is a taut psychological thriller, a coming-of-age novel about identity as well as family; it has reference to the ever popular WW2 theme but the postwar setting and nervousness about Russia is unfortunately once again topical and should speak to anxieties, shared by young people, about the likelihood of a new cold, or even hot (God forbid) war.
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