Secrets of the Homefront Girls
Secrets of the Homefront Girls is a vivid, sprawling family saga set in the East End of London during the Blitz, a setting often visited by British authors. The East End has become part of the mythology of WWII, representing resilience in the face of adversity, which the British hope they still have, and intense neighbourhood solidarity, which the British fear they have lost.
Kate Thompson honours the legend without being starry-eyed about life in the East End in the 1940s. The central characters are a group of women employees at the Yardley cosmetics factory, which astonishingly continued to mass-produce lipstick throughout the bombardment. One of the women, Lily, has been away from the East End for six years, so she can see it with fresh eyes in all its ghastliness: domestic violence, back-street abortions, pollution, squalour and crime. One of the themes of the book is how she re-learns to love the place and its people none the less.
Readers may feel that there is an incredible amount of drama in the domestic life of a few working-class families, but nobody could over-dramatise the great fire-bomb raids of September 1940. I watched the Great Raid myself from the safety of the opposite bank of the river, and the night sky really did turn blood red.
This book is intended as the first of a series following the surviving characters throughout the war, so watch out for more fire and fury.
