Until the War is Over
- This is the second novel in the series that began with Until We Meet Again. Although I haven’t read the first novel, it wasn’t difficult to follow.
Amy and Edmond, a young married couple, have returned to England from the horrors of the fighting in France. Amy, a strong-minded, capable volunteer in a VAD (Volunteer Aid Detachment), must take care of their baby while nursing a badly set broken ankle. She lives with Edmond at the home of his wealthy parents and snobbish sister. He is slowly recovering from lung damage sustained in battle. He now wants to return to his studies at Cambridge, while Amy longs to move away from her in-laws, who think she is not of the right social class.
Although they are far away from the fighting, they are still in danger from enemy bombs, one of which kills Amy’s best friend and colleague in London. Then another enemy is upon them: the Spanish Flu pandemic.
Whether it was merely a coincidence to publish this novel just as we are in the grip of another pandemic, I can’t tell, but it is fascinating and sobering to read how people, already broken by the continuing war, coped.
I enjoyed this novel but felt that, on the whole, it was rather too sweetly polite for me. However, I know most lovers of historical sagas will disagree.
