Godwin at her compelling, thought-provoking best
New Yorker Gail Godwin has been a finalist for America’s National Book Award three times and on the evidence of her latest novel she is certainly gifted at finding the heart of her characters in a telling and moving fashion.
The main risk she takes in this novel is her narrator — 10-year-old Helen — is abrasive, precocious and often not likeable. And yet the risk pays off. Helen’s mother died several years earlier, her grandmother dies as the story begins. And her father is about to leave to take part in confidential work as part of the American war effort in Oak Ridge. He recruits his wife’s cousin, Flora, to look after his daughter for the summer at the end of World War II.
