Reviewed by Emma Crowley
In Nazi-occupied Holland, seventeen-year-old Noa snatches a baby from a train bound for the concentration camps, fleeing with him into the snowy wilderness surrounding the train tracks.
Passing through the woods is a German circus – a troupe of waifs and strays, led by the infamous Herr Neuroff. They agree to take in Noa and the baby, on one condition: to earn her keep, Noa must master the flying trapeze – under the tutorage of mysterious aerialist, Astrid.
Soaring high above the crowds, Noa and Astrid must learn to trust one another…or plummet. But with the threat of war closing in, loyalty can become the most dangerous trait of all.
Reviewed by Emma Crowley
August 1940 and 16-year-old refugee Addie escapes Fascist Italy to live with her aunt and uncle in Atlantic City. As WW2 breaks, she finds acceptance and love with Charlie Connelly and his family.
But war changes everything: secrets and passions abound, and when one brother’s destructive choices lead to the tragic death of another, the Connelly family is decimated, and Addie along with them.
Now 18, she flees, first to Washington and then to war-torn London where she is swept up with life as a correspondent. But when Charlie, now a paratrooper, re-appears, Addie discovers that the past is impossible to outrun. Now she must make one last desperate attempt to find within herself the answers that will lead the way home.
Today I'm handing over the reins of the blog to Emma who had the chance to interview author Pam Jenoff about her latest book The Last Embrace which Emma will also be reviewing later.
Can you give us a brief outline of your new book 'The Last Embrace'?
THE LAST EMBRACE is the story of Adelia Montforte, a 16 year old Italian Jewish girl who emigrates to the Philadelphia in the early years of World War II. Her aunt and uncle take her to vacation at the New Jersey shore, where she falls in with an Irish Catholic family that has four sons. She develops a crush on the eldest, Charlie, and he finally notices her. But just as they find happiness, war breaks out and tragedy strikes. Addie flees her pain, first to Washington and then war-torn London.
You say this book began life over twenty years ago. What made you decide to come back to it? I love how you describe it as a kind of reverse Little Women in terms of a young girl becoming close to a family of four sons.
THE LAST EMBRACE is not a new project for me, but a manuscript I started almost 20 years ago. I was living in Europe at the time; I was in my early 20s, alone and halfway around the world from my family. (And this was before cell phones and the internet so I really was quite alone over there.) In the solitude of living remotely, I realized consciously for the first time what I had known all along: that I wanted to be a writer. So I began a story about Adelia, a young girl who goes to the beach for the summer and meets a family with four sons vacationing next door. For many months, I struggled with the manuscript – I had no English speaking peer group of writers and no way to connect with writing resources back home. I tried to publish it and failed. Ultimately I put it in a drawer and forgot all about it.
Only I didn’t forget. A few years ago, I pulled it out again. The language, though unpolished, leapt out and grabbed me, still ringing fresh and true. I knew there was still a story there worth telling. So I developed the concept, set it during the Second World War, and made the families in the book fail from different religious and ethnic backgrounds. But it was not just a homecoming for the manuscript – working with my own words from a lifetime ago was like having a conversation with my younger self and I could see who I had been and how far I had come since then.
On some level I think I was inspired by Louisa May Alcott’s LITTLE WOMEN, with the boy Laurie living next door to Jo and her three sisters. More recently, I’ve come to realize that some of Addie’s choices (no spoilers here!) were also inspired by Alcott’s work.
