Reviewed by Emma Crowley
September 1940. As the bombs of the Blitz fall on London, Ruby and Stevie are falling in love. United by a shocking experience when they were evacuees, Ruby believes that she understands Stevie like nobody else can. But then Stevie is sent abroad into danger and as Ruby waits, desperately, for letters with foreign stamps that never come, she begins to fear that he is lost forever.
August 2004. Billie has rushed to her father Dick’s hospital bedside. A terrible stroke has robbed him of his speech, and he is a shell of the man he was before. But when Billie finds a crumpled black and white photo in his wallet of a smiling, dark-haired girl she doesn’t recognise, Dick frantically tries to talk. Billie knows that he is trying to tell her something important, and she must ask the questions her father cannot. All she has to go on is the name he is just able to mumble. Ruby.
Billie tracks down Ruby’s aunt, her only surviving relative, and learns that Ruby’s life contained great love, but also great tragedy. Billie is determined to find out what happened to this brave woman, last seen leaving her home for a secret weekend away. Why did nobody miss her? And how is she connected to Billie’s beloved father? Can Billie lay the ghosts of the past to rest, even if it means revealing the darkest secrets of her father’s life and breaking her own heart?
Many thanks to Bookouture via NetGalley for my copy of The Girl Without a Name to review and to Sharon for having my review on the blog.
The Girl Without a Name is the third book from Suzanne Goldring and her best since her debut My Name is Eva. I enjoyed Burning Island but for me this new book is a return to form for the author. As soon as I began this story I was quickly engrossed in the trials and tribulations and ups and downs that Ruby Morrison experiences that ultimately led to a brilliant twist and cliff hanger that I didn’t see coming until the last possible moment. For the majority of the novel I was questioning how does the title fit in with the overall plot and themes of the book but when this becomes apparent, I thought it was pure genius. Only before the big reveal did I sense what was going to unfold and I like books with a satisfying plot twist to remain a mystery for as long as possible so I was really glad this was the case with this book.
The story moves back and forth between 2014 and the war years and on into the early 1950’s. The author moves seamlessly between the two time periods although the aspect of the story set in the past slightly edged it out for me in terms of me being hooked. The scenes and storyline set in 2014 were interesting and informative with well written characters who act as a go between linking the past and present. But I was always left wanting to get back to Ruby in the past in order to uncover her secrets and many connections to the modern day story. It was the inquisitive side of me that raced through Billie attempting to uncover what tormented her father Dick so much in order to go back in time and see how the threads of the story would eventually weave themselves back together to hopefully come full circle.
The book opens in August 2014 as Dick Stevens, a widower for the past three years, watches the events of the Boscastle flooding unfold before his very eyes on a news report on the TV. This catastrophic event stirs something in him, and not for the better as he has a stroke and his daughter Billie finds him on the floor. Dick is taken to hospital and survives but his recovery will be a slow and laborious process if he is to ever return to his full self. Billie constantly frets over Dick as she is the sibling who cares for him in his day to day life and this added burden does nothing to ease her conscience that she is not doing enough. To make matters worse, Dick’s speech is impeded and no matter how hard he tries to communicate something Billie cannot understand him. All she knows is she needs to decipher what he is trying to communicate or he will not rest and recover like he needs to. This sets in motion a series of events that will see Billie delving back into her family history and as she does so some startling revelations come to the fore. The father she knows was not always the man he is today and his experiences during the war have deeply affected him and these struggles and the deep scars he conceals can influence behaviour and relationships for decades.
Billie wonders if she pries into the past, will her opinion of her father be altered forever? Is it worth taking the risk to dig up secrets or perhaps best left lying well enough alone? Or is it worth embarking on the journey in order to sate whatever causes her fathers great upset. I thought Billie attempting to discover what tormented her father bridged the gap between the past and present perfectly. I loved how she showed such loyalty to her Dad and the love she had for him never dwindled. She hated seeing him reduced to a shell of his former self because of the stroke and if she could do anything to ease that pain and suffering she would. But would she reach the core of the problem and if she did would she be happy with what she discovered? Would the fall out of the revelations be too great to overcome?
In September 1939, Ruby is evacuated to Devon into the care of Miss Honey who has a lovely cottage and does her utmost best to care for Ruby and also fellow evacuee Joan. Ruby’s father had died at sea several years before and her mother Hilda feels it is best for her to get away from the dangers posed by the war in London. Joan’s brother Stevie is put up on a farm not too far from the girls and soon they settle into an idyllic existence in the countryside where food is plenty and the threats of bombs and destruction seem very far away. Ruby begins to feel guilty that she is enjoying her time away and thinks perhaps she does not want to go back. She is learning new skills and friendships are forming in particular with Stevie.
Despite her young age she seems totally enamoured with him. But Stevie doesn’t have as perfect a time of it as Ruby and Joan and soon he escapes back to his parents in London. As for Ruby, things don’t always go the way she wants them to at many junctures in her life and when her mother is killed in the blitz she is made return to London to live with her Aunt Ida and Uncle Reg who run a pub. She would give anything to stay with Miss Honey but sadly this is not to be. I think this return to London needed to happen for Ruby otherwise the events that unfold over the remainder of the book would never have happened.
In 1941 Ruby reunites with Stevie and their friendship deepens and they start taking trips to the cinema together. Stevie now acts as a messenger for the ARP bringing important information between them and the police and fire services after bombing raids. Stevie witnesses unspeakable horrors and his fears grow by what he has seen at bombsites but Ruby does her best to allay his worries and concerns. Suzanne Goldring highlighted that right down from the men away fighting on the front down to the person who thinks they are doing the most insignificant role in the war were none the less affected by what they had to go through. People could not recover from their experiences that quickly and they needed all the help and support that they could get. Ruby offered that to Stevie and when war was declared over she believed things could get even more serious between the pair.
I enjoyed seeing Ruby grow up and face the challenges that came her way. She didn’t lead the life she wanted instead having to work and help out in her Aunt’s pub but yet her devotion and loyalty to Stevie remained steadfast. Even though national service tore them apart for some time, it’s when Stevie returns from that duty that I felt the tone of the story altered in a dramatic way whether for the good or better you would have to read this story for yourself to discover. I was taken on a journey in the latter half of the book with both Stevie and Ruby very different from what I had expected upon initially starting this book. There was so much that happened that I never thought possible because initially I thought the entire focus would be on World War Two, it’s events and how the characters coped and amidst it all would be a sweet love story. Instead we are taken beyond this point and what unfolded made for a very surprising yet gripping read.
The opinions I had of certain characters vastly changed, I found myself swaying between having loved them and cared for them at the beginning to being repulsed and hating some of them. Ruby too changed, her actions disappointed me but I suppose love is blind. She became almost gullible and like a slave to her devotion. All Ruby was searching for in her life was security, love and devotion but was she looking in the right places? Did she see just what she wanted to see and not what was really lying in front of her? Would her devotion prove fruitful or in vain? What price do we pay for our experiences as we move into the future perhaps thwarted by the past? All I really wanted to know was did Dick’s reaction in the present intertwine with the past? I would definitely recommend The Girl Without a Name, it is a great mystery packed full of surprises with a deeply gratifying ending.
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