The Dynamite Room by Jason Hewitt
My rating: 4/5 cats
the opening chapter of this book could have come from any post-apocalyptic novel as an eleven-year-old girl wanders alone with her gas mask through a deserted town with boarded-up windows, wondering where everyone has gone.
but this is 1940 suffolk, and lydia has just run away from her temporary shelter in wales, where she had been evacuated with several other children until her family could come for her. bullied and homesick, she decides to return to greyfriars, her family home, only to find the village empty, the house abandoned. with nowhere else to go, lydia settles into the comfort of familiar surroundings, convinced her mother will return for her. instead, in the middle of the night, a wounded german soldier named heiden arrives, telling her he is part of the first wave of an imminent german occupation. he promises not to hurt her, but he will not allow her to leave the house, claiming it is for her own safety. over the course of six claustrophobic days, the two of them will form an uneasy alliance despite lydia’s initial fear and the cracks that keep appearing in heiden’s story as it becomes clear he knows more about her family than he should.
it’s a quietly-told and subtle story that moves slowly but is nonetheless engrossing, as we are taken from the present to the past and given backstory both for heiden and for lydia’s family, and the pivotal place where those stories overlap, in the dynamite room.
the shelves are full of war stories that recount the effects of war on civilians, on children, on soldiers; books about how innocence is tarnished and idealism crushed, about the things people do in war that they could never see themselves doing in ordinary times, how turning away is as big a sin as participation, etc – all the usual themes of wartime novels, particularly WWII novels. but it’s the writing in this book that sets it apart – it’s deliberate and lyrical and the unusual situation gives the story a fairytale cast as these two characters come to know each other in an ever-changing dynamic/struggle/power play. it’s one of those haunting novels that makes for a beautiful reading experience, even though the themes may be familiar.
and it’s another exceptional debut for 2015.
