The most salient issue is the tendency to lump all persons from an enemy nation into one category, refusing to consider that individuals vary, even in wartime. It finally does, in the senseless way that so often happens in wartime.ĭiscussion: Complex issues raised by this story dilute the black and white of war with shades of gray that muddy any obvious judgments. It is tearing Vivienne apart, and something has to give. She does this during the day, and makes love to a German at night.
Somewhat by accident and reluctantly, Vivienne becomes involved in the underground resistance on the island. She doesn’t understand how so much good and evil can coexist in the same universe. She never knows how much Gunther participates or knows about it he prefers to leave all talk of the war outside of her door. Vivienne feels like a traitor, and comes to loathe the behavior of the Germans wearing Nazi uniforms who supervise the slave laborers on the island. Gunther finds in Vivienne the love he never expected to have, and releases in her a passion that she only dreamed about. Gunther too has a marriage back home in Germany that is inadequate in many ways, and Vivienne can sense his loneliness before they even speak.
After a long struggle against her needs and her obvious attraction, Vivienne begins a relationship with one of them, Gunther Lehmann. When the Germans come, four German soldiers move into the deserted house next door. Vivienne knows that Eugene has had a mistress. Vivienne’s husband Eugene has gone to war, but he had been gone in most senses before that they had never truly been in love, and in any event had not had any sexual relations since Millie was conceived. Her widowed mother-in-law Evelyn lives with them also. Vivienne de la Mare lives with her two children, Blanche, 14, and Millie, 4, in a lovely isolated home on the island. Set during World War II, the story takes us from the last day that Guernsey Islanders could evacuate for London before the arrival of the Germans in June, 1940, through all of the war, to an epilogue in 1946.
This is an absorbing story written in beautiful, evocative prose with characters that are occasionally frustrating but all the more realistic for it.
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