A London family saga based on the lives of the author's own family.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
A moving, emotional story that spans generations,
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This review is from: Our Family (Paperback)
Our Family is an autobiographical novel based upon the family history of author Victor Pemberton. The book opens in London during the early days of the First World War, as young Letty Edgington meets Ollie Hobbs, a soldier who has been wounded on the French battlefield. Letty and Oliver fall in love and, despite their very different socioeconomic backgrounds and the objections of their families, the couple decide to wed. The novel follows the story of their marriage over the succeeding decades, through good times and bad.
Pemberton invests his characters with real humanity, presenting them as living, breathing, feeling individuals. No one of them is all good or all bad, and he succeeds in finding redemptive qualities in even those people who at first glance would seem completely unlikeable. Pemberton delves deep into their minds and souls of Letty, Ollie, their family and friends, revealing what motivates their actions, giving us a real understanding of who they are. One of the most striking sections of Our Family is the portions set during World War II. I am Jewish, and I also minored in History in college. So I had some knowledge of certain events of the War. But I never really understood the horrors experienced on the Home Front in Britain until now. Pemberton's depiction of the Hobbs family's struggles to endure through five long years of almost-daily air raids by the Nazi Luftwaffe and subsequent rocket attacks on London, seeing their beloved city turned to rubble, watching helplessly as innocent civilians die in the terrible bombings, is incredibly powerful. Pemberton communicates all of this in a way that the matter-of-fact paragraphs and still photographs of a history textbook can never achieve. I was left with a profound admiration for the British civilians who endured half a decade of the horrors of war. Pemberton tells the story of Letty, Ollie, and their children up until the late Twentieth Century. When I reached the end of the novel, it was kind of a bittersweet experience. Throughout the course of the book, I had gotten to know the characters so well, and I was almost reluctant to part company with them. I almost felt like I knew these people personally. Pemberton achieves a definite emotional resonance in his writing. Our Family is a rich, stirring tale that left me deeply moved. I highly recommend this novel.
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