In the Shadow of War (The Three Fry Sisters)
For the Fry women, the 1930s pose differing challenges. While dutiful Celie and her family are struggling to make farming pay on the Canadian prairies and her spirited sister Jessie is training to be a doctor in an increasingly turbulent Egypt, while juggling marriage, motherhood and a difficult mother-in-law, flighty youngest sister Etta sets her sights on becoming a Hollywood star, despite the disadvantage of being in her late 30s. Meanwhile, their formidable mother, Christina, is struggling to keep a decades-long secret under wraps, while fighting for an inheritance she believes is rightfully hers, and the world teeters dangerously towards war.
This is the third book in a series that will clearly have at least one more sequel. As such, there’s a lot of backstory to fill in, but this is done skilfully enough not to become confusing or tedious and doesn’t get in the way of unfolding events. The characters are well-developed and individualised. (I’m especially fond of Christina’s bullish maid Hettie.) On the whole, the research seems sound (though having read a lot of novels written in the 1930s, I’m not sure that individual Bakewell tarts or cannoli were standard fare at tea parties of the time).
There are a few malapropisms, e.g. ‘espoused’ for ‘expounded’, and I doubt student lodgings in Cambridge would have been referred to as ‘dorm rooms’. I wondered about Jessie’s Black American journalist friend Ruth, but working for French publications probably gives her greater freedoms than if she had been working for the American press.
The whole novel comes across like a soap opera with its highly dramatic storylines, but as with any long-running serial, some plot elements (illegitimacy, blackmail, disputed wills) are made use of more than once. Fans of the late Penny Vincenzi’s sweeping family dramas should enjoy this.
