Antiquarian and Classic Book Reviews
Works written during World War I or World War II. Not quite Post-War or Interwar, but similar thematically.
You are viewing Wartime reviews.
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These two novels were written in 1942, before their author was arrested by the Nazis and sent to Auschwitz where she died of typhoid. The novels and notes were kept in a suitcase and taken by her daughter when she fled from the Nazis during the war. After that, the suitcase remained unopened until 1998. This is a review of Irène Némirovsky’s Suite Française.
Where you live is such an integral part of your everyday existence, and this is a novel about Harlem in the Depression Era — covering social politics, racial politics, as well as the complex interplay of social clubs and both religious and charitable organizations. This is a review of Claude McKay’s Amiable with Big Teeth.
It’s a book about many things: Canada’s struggle for identity as a sovereign nation with a complex relationship to Britain and British politics, the psychological and physical impacts of war, the differing attitudes of different strata of society towards the war overseas. I always find Can Lit particularly provides an atmosphere where this kind of multi-layered complexity flourishes. This is a review of Hugh MacLennan’s Barometer Rising.
I was first introduced to this book via the 1934 film of the same name that was very loosely based on it. We watched it on Turner Classic Movies one evening and I thought perhaps that the novel would fill in some of the gaps that I saw in the film. This is a review of W. Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage.
