Review - Unexploded by Alison Macleod

Penguin UK

The novel is set in Brighton during 1940 and 1941 and follows the story of Geoffrey and Evelyn Beaumont and their son, Philip as they prepare for what they think will be an enemy invasion. The area is awash with rumour and counter-rumour, and when Geoffrey is removed from his stable job at the bank and sent to be the superintendent of an enemy alien camp, Evelyn and Philip are left  to fend for themselves. When Evelyn comes across Otto Gottlieb, a Jewish painter who is interred in her husband's camp, she is at first distrustful of him and yet irrevocably their lives are about to be changed forever.

I think what was so splendid about this book was how it captured the very ordinariness of everyday life and even as the mundanity began to hit home, there was always the danger that the threat of invasion was only ever 50 miles away across the sea in France. I enjoyed it.

 

Unexploded

was a

Man Booker Prize Nominee for Longlist (2013) 

My thanks to NetGalley and Penguin UK for my copy of this book 

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