DARE NOT TELL by Elain Aucoin Schroller

The novel is named for the poem by Henry Lawson, “The things we dare not tell,“ and includes verses from that poem at each section.

Although the story is billed as concerning events in World War I, it opens in 1939 London. Immediately we learned that Joe's  brother Robbie had been missing, presumed killed,  for the past 22 years. Then we follow Joe and his wife Sophie, a war nurse, back to their World War I meet, and onward again to 1939.  Joe and Sophie spend part of the summer in France, and slowly realize that the shadow of war is looming over the border from Germany again.

Sophie and Joe are overall good, responsible, ethical people. Their wartime and later relationships develop in a way that feels recognizably real. This is solid women's fiction from a historical perspective. The details of Parisian wartime life are seamlessly woven in (although there's a lot of roast chicken eaten). Their travels through France and meeting with other WW1 veterans at the War Memorial are engaging, although the secondary characters aren't developed. Joe's troubles with nightmares and other symptoms of Post-Combat Stress Disorder are convincing.

The second half of the book is almost a different story than the first. If the first half is good women's fiction, the second is mediocre spy story. Journal entries from an unnamed point of view character are introduced out of nowhere. These were 'as you know, Bob' descriptions of the narrator's actions instead of credible journal entries that reveal the character and motivations of their writer. I found them an unnecessary distraction from, rather than an augmentation to, the unfolding intrigue plot. The tension would have been greater if Joe and Sophie, along with the readers, had been left guessing for longer about the source of the suspicious events..

Don't judge this author's whole future body of work on this one review. The writing is sound and there's deft handling of the main characters. The structural issues of the second half are not uncommon with debut authors, and should have been pointed out by editors, as should the relative flatness of the secondary characters. I would look at this author's next book before crossing them off my reading list


**********SPOILER ALERT***********

Joe's brother's MIA/KIA status was presented as a significant factor almost in the first scene, then rarely referred to, and was resolved way too easily for the part it was hyped to play. The reader also is told early the actual 'big secret' he's keeping from his wife, and when the Big Reveal finally arrives it falls rather flat 

 

 NetGalley #wartime #fiction #WW1 #WW2 #WomensFiction #spying #espionage #MontBlanc #Chamonix #France #historical