Customer Reviews

Out of the blackout (A Nightingale mystery in large print)

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4 star:		(5)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

"Out of the Blackout" is my favorite novel by British author Robert Barnard. Simon Thorn, a young man who was lost in the London blitz during World War II as a child, searches for his true identity. This mystery novel is one of the most unusual books I've ever read. I read this book in one sitting because I quite simply could not put it down. I was totally engrossed in this novel; I had to know what happened. I can only remember 2 or 3 books as good as this one. It is a masterpiece, and is very highly recommended!

This is one of my favorite Robert Barnard books - and he is my favorite writer. His plots are never ordinary, and his characterizations very shrewd, as one editorial review put it. You can't help caring about his characters, and the plots are engrossing and keep you reading until the end of the book.

This story is subtle and builds slowly to a surprise ending that is very satisfying. I can't decide what is best about Barnard's writing - the character development, the plot lines, the way he sets the reader down in the scene and makes the sights and sounds very real, the way he understands his characters and is often fondly amused by them, while also being cynically witty at their expense. His protagonists seem like real people you would like to know. When he writes about an awful person you are in no doubt about how awful that person is. Also, which is very satisfying, he knows the English language and grammer, and uses them well. So many popular novels are written by people who aren't really sure about their own language, and the editing can be pretty sloppy. Not so here - the writing and editing is elegant.

"Don't kill her! Don't!" The young Simon wakes up screaming! The gentle couple who have taken Simon in are more than a little confused. In Robert Barnard's "Out of the Blackout," the author sets this finely-tuned and suspenseful novel during the blizt of London during the War. Children have been evacuated to the countryside for their own safety, more often than not to live for the duration of the war with complete strangers. Young Simon Thorn shows up in the village of Yeasdon, along with the other evacuated children. However, his name is on on list, his address doesn't exist, and few clues can be found in the few items he possesses. Many questions abound and Barnard, with his accustomed patience and logical thinking, sets out to solve this mystery. He does so in a touching, poignant manner, and he brings vividly to life all the aspects of these dark and dangerous days of the blitz. Barnard deserves his well-earned reputation.(Billyjhobbs@tyler.net)

In "Out of the Blackout", Robert Barnard has woven a compelling story of how a boy,lost in the London blitz, finally discovered his roots in a long process of investigation and in so doing found some sense of liberation. We feel the slow unfolding of his knowledge of the past through clues which mark the story as a first class mystery. Only Barnard's "Masters of the House" comes close to matching this one in suspense. We passed the book from friend to friend all of whom felt the same as we did about it

This book is a bit of a departure for Robert Barnard. The story is really quite different. It's a story about a small boy who is evacuated out of London during the blitz. He's a scared little boy with what appears to be a made-up name, but he is taken in by a loving couple who treat him like their own, and who raise him to adulthood. But when Simon is back in London as a man, he feels the need to try to find his original family. He uncovers a thoroughly detestable family that he knows he was part of, but he has to find out where exactly he fit in. He unovers an old murder that he actually had been a witness to as a small boy. The way that Barnard unfolds the plot in this story is wonderful. It's like peeling an onion - after one layer there are many more layers underneath, with more secrets and revelations.

I was impressed by this book. A young man, adopted by a loving couple, searches for his original family-he doesn't even remember his mother's name. Was his mother murdered?
Barnard is truly skillful at describing characters-the obnoxious Simmenters could almost be from a Charles Dickens novel.
The ending is a surprise. A very intriguing plot!

I'm quite a Barnard fan, and this is perhaps the best of his mysteries. At one level it is a study of a child who gets himself fostered by a loving rural family and does well in life. At another it is about his search, from that successful background, for his family of origin. At another it is a mystery of murder (but whose?), abuse, and deception. There's even a bit of a love story. We move through a wide sweep of time and social environments -- the way the narrative moves in time is especially interesting.

Barnard specialises in attractive characters, and in a realistic satire on British society. This one, like MASTERS OF THE HOUSE, has the development of a human being at the centre of it, and murder almost at the periphery. Barnard NEVER writes to a formula -- all his books are different, and this one can be guaranteed to be a very unusual kind of crime novel.

"Out of the Blackout" by British crime writer Robert Barnard is more of a novel than a murder mystery or detective story. There are no detectives. What you'll find is superior, probing characterization, deft narration, natural and incisive dialogue and at the end a strong element of irony.
During the Blitz of London when the city was being devastated and its citizens killed, children were evacuated to the British countryside to keep them out of harm's way. A young boy who calls himself Simon Thorn turns up in Yeasdon with an evacuation group, and yet his name does not appear on any of the lists, and he has no identification. He settles in with a loving family, the Cutheridges, and no one is ever able to identify him.
One day when he's a grown-up university student wandering around the Paddington section of London, he sees the door of the house where he once lived. Years later after a failed marriage, he investigates and finds the family living there in war time was the Simmeters now living in Islington. He goes to their house and becomes a lodger with them. They are a nasty bunch: the old mother and her son Len had been fascist bigots in favor of Hitler before and during World War II. The third member of the family is a selfish self-absorbed monster named Connie.
Simon works at the London Zoo, and during his spare time he tries to find out as much as he can about the family. He learns that his probable mother Mary died in an air raid. He gets friendlier with the creepy tribe, "the yukky family" and learns a lot of family secrets. Len is a loathsome creature and Simon is horrified to think the sadist was his father, a man who physically abused and terrorized Mary. Len had "some big fright he never recovered from."
Barnard explores the psychology and motivation of his characters. As usual pub life is an important element in a Barnard story. Simon, detective-like, recreates his family past. Before you reach the end of this gripping book, you'll encounter many twists and turns, some deeply ironic.

A tightly plotted, fascinating novel that has the feel of authenticity, OUT OF THE BLACKOUT is a superb thriller in the early Ruth Rendell vein. I've never read Robert Barnard before (thank you, Felony & Mayhem Mysteries!), but the style is economical and very engaging, the character believable, and the story really interesting.

Most of the action takes place in London in 1964, and Barnard does a good job of capturing that end-of-the-postwar era, just before the Swinging 60's take hold. He also reminds us about the fascist movement in England in the 1930s, and does it all with a spareness of words -- just specific details here and there about this meeting or that graffiti -- that never sounds preachy.

But the real pleasure of this book is the unfolding of the plot, which is character-driven and none too sensational. The surprises come in small doses rather than sudden tell-all revelations. The final twist may not surprise you, but it will satisfy. If you like the early Ruth Rendell -- such as ONE ACROSS, TWO DOWN -- or Ian McEwan's THE CEMENT GARDEN, you have a great treat in store with OUT OF THE BLACKOUT.

Mr Barnard's novel is set in England in 1941. For reasons of security, many children from London were evacuated to new homes in the countryside during the war. One day, a group of twenty children arrives at Yeasdon Station and among them there is an unlisted Simon Thorn instead of a certain Terence Stope. After much discussing and reflecting, Simon is taken to the Cutheridge family who adopt him so that at the age of eighteen, Cutheridge becomes Simon's official last name.

Some years later, after having studied zoology at Oxford university, Simon returns to London and he is determined to find out the truth about his origins. After much painstaking research and with the help of birth announcements in newspapers and a large portion of luck, Simon focuses his attention on a Leonard Simmeter of 25 Miswell Terrace, EC1, London.

So the door to a re-discovery suddenly opens for Simon and will eventually lead him to unravel a vicious crime that had never been detected.