{"id":823,"date":"2012-11-01T13:28:00","date_gmt":"2012-11-01T19:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=823"},"modified":"2012-11-01T13:28:00","modified_gmt":"2012-11-01T19:28:00","slug":"maureen-jennings-beware-this-boy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/maureen-jennings-beware-this-boy\/","title":{"rendered":"Maureen Jennings: Beware this Boy"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Jennings has a note at the end of this novel about the source of her title \u2013 it\u2019s from Dickens\u2019 A Christmas Carol: <\/em>\u201c\u2026most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom unless the writing be erased.\u201d \u00a0Jennings skills as a novelist are somewhat similar to Charles Dickens skills, so this is an appropriate quote in many ways.\u00a0 Her Dickensian talents lie in her ability to create an entire universe within her pages, bulging with characters, none of them \u2013 from the central character of Tom Tyler down to a briefly met matron in a bomb shelter \u2013 forgettable.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Set inside and around a munitions factory during WWII in the town of Birmingham, England, this book, like the first in the trilogy (Season of Darkness<\/em>), is female-centric.\u00a0 As most of the men are overseas fighting, it\u2019s inevitable, but of course Jennings could have chosen the path of utilizing a male (or female) war veteran as her central character.\u00a0 But she\u2019s more interested in what\u2019s happening at home during the war, which is more uncharted territory.\u00a0 I think only Christopher Fowler\u2019s Full Dark House <\/em>and Peter Lovesey\u2019s Rough Cider<\/em> capture some of the same atmosphere.\u00a0 Fowler captured the Blitz beautifully; Lovesey, the life of a refuge child sent to live in the unfamiliar countryside.<\/p>\n

Her central character, Tom Tyler, is male, but he\u2019s more the calm, observant center of the books (much like Inspector Murdoch is in Jennings\u2019 other terrific series).\u00a0 While he\u2019s the one that pieces things together and provides a narrative driver in the traditional form of a police inspector,\u00a0 Tyler has been sent to Birmingham from his homebase of tiny Whitchurch to look into a bombing at a munitions factory there.\u00a0 As he\u2019s estranged from his wife thanks to events in the first book, he\u2019s happy to take this on.\u00a0 Jennings has deftly set up her story with a heartbreaking opening in the munitions factory.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s very good \u2013 great even \u2013 at depicting the hustle bustle of ordinary life, and then loading it with meaning by throwing a catastrophe into the mix.\u00a0 In this case, she introduces us to several munitions workers arriving for their normal shift and then she blows up the factory.\u00a0 The ripples from the explosion \u2013 literally and figuratively \u2013 are the source of her story threads.<\/p>\n

She uses a family involved in the factory \u2013 nurse Eileen lives at home with her parents, her father is a dilly man (explained in the book).\u00a0 The family also knew some of the girls involved in the explosion. And their lives are upended by the return \u2013 unplanned, unwelcome, and illegal \u2013 of Eileen\u2019s nephew, Brian.\u00a0 They harbor him and their struggles as a family to decide what to do with Brian are very real, and very heartbreaking.\u00a0 Brian may be the \u201cboy\u201d of the title, but so might be Donny, a ne\u2019er do well who is blackmailing Brian\u2019s younger brother and then Brian himself.<\/p>\n

The strands of the story are interwoven and each character, rich and nuanced, brings their own problems, worries, and assets to the table.\u00a0 While there\u2019s a conspiracy as well as a murder in this book, I wouldn\u2019t call it primarily a crime novel.\u00a0 I\u2019d call it a novel depicting the struggles of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances.\u00a0 A perfect Jennings quote is this one:\u00a0 \u201cThe clock on the mantelpiece chimed.\u00a0 A pleasant, melodic sound that seemed to belong to the world of china teacups and freshly toasted crumpets, not this squalid, dingy room filled with murder.\u201d\u00a0 The ordinary and the extraordinary, side by side.<\/p>\n

Jennings gift of bringing to life the day to day living of people living during a catastrophe is a truly unusual one.\u00a0 Her prose, her characters, and her skill as a narrator all intersect seamlessly.\u00a0 This is a novel from a gifted writer and storyteller.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jennings has a note at the end of this novel about the source of her title \u2013 it\u2019s from Dickens\u2019 A Christmas Carol: \u201c\u2026most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom unless the writing be erased.\u201d \u00a0Jennings skills as a novelist are somewhat similar to Charles … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[10],"class_list":["post-823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-historical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=823"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":825,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823\/revisions\/825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}