The Oaken Heart by
Margery Allingham: A Review by Warren Bull
This is not a novel. Although
Margery Allingham is one of the great writers of Mystery Fiction’s Golden Age,
she also wrote non-fiction about her life and experiences. The Oaken Heart tells about a small village named Auburn during
World War II. I found it rather difficult to identify people usually called by
their nicknames. And I’m not sure her experience was typical of what people
went through.
Still, it is a record of the effect
of war skillfully written by an intelligent, observant woman. It gives a sense
of the trials, fears and tragedy that accompanied even people far from the
front lines. It is not without
humor, even during the darkest days.
She conveys what a shock it was to
find out a war was underway when no sane person wanted war and when the losses
of WWI were still keenly felt. She talked about how planning for housing for
children evacuated from London were accomplished without fuss of bother in one
day. The author also talked about
the false hope generated when little happened in the earliest day after war was
declared.
She mentioned so many aspects of
her life that I cannot do justice to everything she described. Among them she wrote
about trying to continue her work as a writer during the upheavals caused by
the war; how military setbacks, such as the capitulation of France, were experienced
as very personal blows; and what it was like to be bombed.
All in all this is a remarkable
book by a first rate writer about England during World War II. If you want to
get a sense of what that time was like, I cannot think of a better book to
read.
Allingham's book sounds very interesting, a good source of small town life during WW2. Earlier this year, I researched the same period in small coastal American town, distilling facts of daily life, political realities, hopes and fears, into a short story.
ReplyDeleteWarren, somewhere in my thousands of books, I probably have a copy of this book. I'll have to try to find it. Of course, my early years I lived through World War 11 in a rural area, but went to movies in the closest town that always had news clips of the war overseas.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Warren. I've been reading quite a bit of WWII fiction lately, and this sounds like it might be a good addition to my list.
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