Amanda Hodgkins
Penguin
Otago Daily Times, May 8th 2011
22 Britannia Road deals with the aftermath of war and the profound changes that it wreaks on people. The novel opens in the spring of 1946 as a refugee ship carrying a young Polish woman, Sylvana Nowack, and her son Aurek docks in Ipswitch where her husband, Janusz, is waiting for them. Separated when German forces entered Poland, Janusz escaped and joined the British RAF while Silvana spent years hiding in the countryside with Aurek, waiting for the fighting to end.
Six years and a lifetime of events now stand between them, and they meet as strangers. Although both want to start afresh (Janusz by creating the perfect English family, Sylvana by finding a father for Aurek), it soon becomes clear that they must come to terms with the past before they can make a future together. But the secrets to be revealed could shatter the fragile new relationship as irreparably as continued silence.
The story alternates between the novelistic present and the events during the war, providing welcome variations in tone, pacing and voice, as well as moments of respite from the bleakness that pervades much of the book. This is particularly true of Aurek, who retains the capacity to be filled with the woods and sharp smell of spring, and who imagines the bone-lined nests of the kingfisher as tiny, bejewelled palaces.
As a mother, Silvana’s story embodies the worst of nightmares, but some of the imagery stays with me just as strongly; a happy memory for Janusz is “a weakness he savours briefly, sweet and good as a spoonful of sugar in bitter barracks tea”, while Aurek imagines splitting into a hundred different boys who could climb every tree and perch up on high “like a great cackle of magpies.” This is a rich and rewarding novel, particularly impressive for being the author’s first, and I will be interested to see where she goes next.
https://www.odt.co.nz/entertainment/books/explorations-aftermath-war
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