Kathy Rollinson, WordPlay member and author of the Fallyn Trilogy, loves to read also. Every now and again she’ll pick up a book that really pulls at her heartstrings and tells us about it. Here she reviews My Gentle War by Joy Lennick.
The Velvet Valleys
Having moved to South Wales myself when I was twelve, I felt the affection Joy Lennick feels for Wales immediately in this delightful book.
I found the ‘History of the Havards,’Harwards,’Howards’ at the beginning of the book particularly interesting. The author had obviously done a lot of research on the name, and stated, Several Havards are listed amongst the aristocracy and landed gentry in Burke’s Peerage…a first son inherited everything. Other children often became impoverished and disappeared from recorded history…This is probably where our branch of the Havard’s came from! Hey ho.
Laughter, Poetry, and Imagery
Humour is evident throughout the book as you follow the adventures of this gifted, imaginative little girl, cocooned in her Welsh village. While bombs are raining on her hometown, Dagenham, Essex, she is sliding down a Welsh slag-tip!
The author’s love of poetry is evident in her beautiful descriptions. May I quote you a few from her book?
Page 23. A few stately white lilies graced another corner of our smothered plot, putting me in mind of the Lady of Shallot and other maidens…Sweet and heady mock orange blossom conjured up flying confetti…
This fragrant fragment continues on page 24. I was almost heady with the imagery of perfumed flowers.
On pages 100 – 105 the author shows photographs of her family and events in her life, including an extract from her dad’s notebook (page 103) of Christmas Day, 1939. On pages 104, 105, there is a letter she received from Mrs Clementine Churchill, wife of Winston Churchill. We had held a fundraising event for the war effort…Days later I received this personal handwritten thank you… This letter comes high on the list of my most valuable physical possessions.
The author salutes all the kind people who took and cared for evacuees at a great time of need. I salute Joy Lennick for her story, which evokes the magic of childhood, despite constant change and occasional heartache during the dark days of war.
My Gentle War (Memoir of an Essex Girl) is available on Amazon and for the Kindle. You can read more about Joy here.
And if you haven’t read Fallyn and the Dragons by KJ Rollinson yet, then now is a perfect time to do so. You can download it for free on Kindle between 26th October and 30th October – a perfect Halloween gift for all.
Filed under: Book Reviews Tagged: book review, joy lennick, kj rollinson, my gentle war
