Reviewed by Emma Crowley
1943, London: Elizabeth Carmichael is rushing to work in her smart army uniform, worrying about her fiancé in the RAF, when she collides with a tall man in the middle of the street. She instantly recognises him from a faded photograph on her mother’s mantlepiece. This chance meeting will change everything Elizabeth thought she knew about herself and her family.
1960, London: Violet Carmichael wipes the dust from her husband Charles’s antique writing desk, and is amazed to find a hidden compartment with diaries nestling inside. As the story of Carmichael’s war years unravel, she is led to an old telegram. Will Violet finally understand the mysteries of her husband’s past – or will the discovery of a tragic secret shatter her family forever?
Many thanks to Bookouture via NetGalley for my copy of The Telegram to review and to Sharon for having my review on the blog.
The Telegram by Debbie Rix takes the reader back and forth between the two World Wars and beyond. It’s an interesting tale of how an incident can impact one man’s life for many years but also how this event can alter the lives of so many others also. The brief prologue had me intrigued and expecting great things. It’s set in 1916 as Tilly and her family receive a telegram with devastating news which shatters their world in two. How will they ever recover from this? I thought that I knew where the book would go from this point but instead it took a different direction and the first chapter was set 23 years later in 1943. Here we were introduced to Elizabeth. There was no mention of Tilly and for numerous chapters I found myself seeking her out and when she didn’t reappear for the majority of the book I was left wondering how she fitted into the overall picture? It made me think was there too much detail in the prologue and should the bare minimum have been provided instead?
Elizabeth lives in London with her mother Madeline. She never knew her father growing up as her parents divorced when she was only a baby. Now Elizabeth has joined the ATS - The Women’s Auxiliary Territorial Service - and works in the typing pool in the war office. Her fiancé is away fighting and is part of the R.A.F. One day Elizabeth bumps into a man more or less right outside her front door and he looks very familiar. He is the man who has stared out from a photo on her mantel piece for many years. It’s her long lost father Charles and it turns out he lives on the street that herself and her mother moved into not long ago. At first Charles is standoffish and refuses to engage with Elizabeth but they meet and she wears him down and over several chapters they form a tentative bond. There are many questions as to where Charles has been all these years but these are answered at a slow and gentle pace. To be honest I understood Elizabeth was there as the conduit to Charles having to reveal his story but it was definitely Charles and his wife Violet who I wanted to read about all the time.
It’s very difficult to say anything in depth about Charles without giving away the bones of the story. Suffice to say he is a man who has a mysterious past that he keeps secret from literally everyone except the very select few who need to know specific details. He is full of intrigue and secrets and the word enigma describes him to a t. I could see that deep down he did love Violet but he didn’t know how to let go and relax and be himself around her. I wonder did he even know who he really was as he was so accustomed to keeping up a façade? He has a very complex background and he carries the weight of the world and trauma on his shoulders. He engrosses himself in his work at the war office and by night writes crime novels. It’s almost as he if has no time to dedicate to Violet and she feels the effects of this and it’s as if she is living a single life but yet has to tend to a man. When she learns of Elizabeth her foundations are shook but I admired how she tried to get to know her. But in turn it made her realise that she doesn’t know everything about her husband and if she probed deeper would she be happy with what she discovered? I loved Violet as a character and I would have really enjoyed to read an entire book about her. I thought her actions throughout were admirable. I mean she could have turned tail and ran from her marriage once she knew of Elizabeth but she was loyal and steadfast despite the pair leading virtual separate lives.
I felt throughout this book that there was a strong sense of trying to tell a story but it never really got going or else it very nearly reached a critical/climatic point but then stalled before this occurred. More or less near the very beginning I knew what the secret was. Well not the exact specifics but I was close enough and I would have much rather have been kept in suspense until near the last quarter or so of the book. Yes, there was a big reveal but it didn’t feel as hard hitting as it should have and I think that’s because too much as given away far too early on. The reader knew exactly what was going on throughout and I would have loved to have been able to have read between the lines a bit more and to be left constantly guessing with every turn of the page. Once the reader established something it took some time for the characters to catch up but by that point, I wanted something different and I wasn’t as invested I their reactions as I ought to have been. In the author’s end notes she mentions it’s difficult to know whether to keep the reader in suspense not knowing from the outset or to reveal details at the beginning. In this case, remaining in suspense would have been my preferred option. At the end I learned that this book was based on a true story from the author’s father-in-law and this helped me gain more appreciation for the tale that was told but still overall despite being an interesting and informative read it didn’t fully quite hit the mark for me. I’ve loved books that this author has written in the past and this one had such great potential but wasn’t the best that I have read and I as left wanting more.
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