Crooked Heart

Summary (from the publisher): When Noel Bostock—aged ten, no family—is evacuated from London to escape the Nazi bombardment, he lands in a suburb northwest of the city with Vera Sedge—a thirty-six-year old widow drowning in debts and dependents. Always desperate for money, she’s unscrupulous about how she gets it.

Noel’s mourning his godmother Mattie, a former suffragette. Wise beyond his years, raised with a disdain for authority and an eclectic attitude toward education, he has little in common with other children and even less with the impulsive Vee, who hurtles from one self-made crisis to the next. The war’s provided unprecedented opportunities for making money, but what Vee needs—and what she’s never had—is a cool head and the ability to make a plan.

On her own, she’s a disaster. With Noel, she’s a team.

Together, they cook up a scheme. Crisscrossing the bombed suburbs of London, Vee starts to make a profit and Noel begins to regain his interest in life. But there are plenty of other people making money out of the war—and some of them are dangerous. Noel may have been moved to safety, but he isn’t actually safe at all. . . .

 

Review: I received an uncorrected proof copy from HarperCollins.

 

Noel Bostock is ten years old when the Nazi bombardment of London happens. Unlike other ten year olds, he doesn't a family, since his recent guardian, his godmother Mattie, has died. When Noel is evacuated from London, he lands with Vee, an unscrupulous middle aged woman who makes it through life hopping from one scheme to the next and always only one step ahead of her creditors. Yet Noel and Vee form an unlikely team. Brought together by the tragedy of war, Vee and Noel find salvation in each other that could hardly have ben anticipated.

 

Evans has managed to write a unique story about World War II and a different perspective on what it means to be a survivor. Noel and Vee are in many ways misfits. Noel comes from an uncertain background; the reader never learns what has happened to his parents. When Vee asks about his parents, Noel "closed his mouth firmly, like someone shutting a sash window" (48). Meanwhile, Vee had a baby out of wedlock as a teenager, and has been struggling to support her now adult son and disabled mother ever since. Noel doesn't get along with his classmates and Vee is shunned by most of society. Together, they capitalize on the circumstances they find themselves in, making money by masquerading as volunteers raising funds for the war effort.

 

This novel isn't about the war, it's about two individuals carrying on living their lives in the midst of war. The war becomes a backdrop to their story: "though Noel had never consciously learned their names, he knew by now that they were Spitfires, in the same way that he knew that when a bird hung trembling in the air it was  a kestrel" (92). Most moving was seeing Noel and Vee move from an unlikely pair thrown together against their will to a family unit. Vee, long known for her relative lack of concern for morals or the wellbeing of others, begins to deeply care for the little evacuee in her care; "what on earth would happen to an evacuee with no family and nowhere permanent to live? He could end up in a children's home: football matches and community singing and a future in the forces - round holes for the squarest possible peg. Her hands were clammy at the thought" (262). Yet the irony is that Noel saves Vee from her hapless existence just as much as she saves him.

 

This was a relatively simple story and an easy read. Despite the fact that the two main characters have few friends, they were easy to like and empathize with as a reader.

 

Stars: 4