Customer Reviews

Kissing Kin

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I discovered this book largely because the staircase in the local public library deposits browsers in the T section of fiction, and it appealed to me as a dark, yet not hopelessly grim, novel of WWI. As a Williamsburg novel, _Kissing Kin_ provides a good deal of exposition needed to get from _The Light Heart_ to _This Was Tomorrow_, but it is certainly the darkest of the series, and the happy endings seem a tad contrived. Our heroine, Camilla, epitomizes the "lost generation," as her idealistic efforts to help with WWI ultimately leave her rootless and drifting until the darkening cloud of Nazi Germany revives her sense of purpose.

I ordered this book without realizing I already had it. That's okay. My fault. It did com in a very timely manner and was very nice. If I keep this up, I will have two complete collections of Elswyth Thane's Williamsburg Series. Good Summer reading.

"The human memory is a tricky and unreliable thing, and the research for the background of this book, which lies within the experience of a great many people today, has therefore been as carefully done as for remote historical times. The English illustrated periodicals are the last word in accuracy and vivid coverage on the 1914-1918 war, and on current opinion during the growth of Nazism. I am grateful to Air Marshal Sir William Welsh, Air-Commodore Peregrine Fellowes and Mr. Francis Vivian Drage, who flew with the RAF during the first World War, for helpful comment and additional information on the pages concerned with early combat flying, which was so different from the work done by the Flying Fortresses and Spitfires in the recent past.

The summers in England which were an unalterable part of my life from 1928 to 1939 supply me with a certain personal viewpoint, but the opinions expressed by Johnny Malone and Bracken Murray in the book are drawn from the published record of foreign correspondents and statemen in Europe during those years. No balanced estimate of the twenty-five years between the wars can be complete without a thoughtful study of Leopold Schwartzchild's "World In Trance" - a book which should be compulsory reading for every adult in the Western World.

Miss Barbara Hayes of the British Information Service very kindly made it possible for me to learn more about St. Dunstan's than is readily available in this country. Dr. Joseph Fobes gave patient and comprehensible answers to my queries about surgical details. And as always, Mrs. F. G. King and the staff of the New York Society Library have been endlessly helpful to me."

I felt these acknowledgements gave great insight into the book, its purpose and accuracy...remembering also that they were written in 1948 shortly after WWII.

Camilla and Calvert (well, Calvert isn't around much) are some of Thane's weakest characters in this series. It's a shame that Camilla, who seems pallid and passive, is the focal point of the book. The secondary story is equally frustrating, with characters who are far from compelling. Still, Thane sets up her historical setting well, and seems to do another good job of creating characters who are of their time rather than hers.