The Soldier’s Wife

Travel Guide

Feel yourself transported to the island of Guernsey. As the novel opens it is a world of peace, calm living and an easy and almost sleepy existence. Vivienne and Blanche cycle in the countryside, round the town and life is good –

Blanche and I would cycle down the lane that leads to the shore, a lane that is shadowed and secret with branches that meet overhead and musical with the singing the streams that run down to the water there; and then suddenly we would come out into light at the end of the lane, to the beach that is held between tall cliffs like a jewel cradled between cupped palms, to the sleek wet sand and the glistening jade-green clarity of the sea.

Once the war comes, the cloud of suspicion darkens the island and draws a veil between the Nazi soldiers and the islands inhabitants. No one really knows or understands the brutality of what is happening to their island – not Vivienne and not even some of the Nazi soldiers.

This is a stark yet realistic and utterly heartbreaking picture of what war myst have really been like. Where is the line between enemies? Who is the enemy? How do you cope when the invaders are living amongst you. The Nazi soldiers view of what is happening is stark –

“Many of us who served in the army, believing in our country-that we had to restore our pride, to recover the land we had lost-when we saw what had been done, we wept….Not all of us, but some of us.”

Guernsey is an island caught between two hard stones – occupation and resistance. This is a picture of war but a blurred picture with no hard lines no black and white, but blurry, smudged areas of grey.