There is intense and sometimes searing drama throughout the narrative of Erik and Hans’ wartime years. The novel is funny, sad, poignant and always absorbing, with engaging and believable characters. Clarry, Peter and Rupert are still there, as strong and lovable adults, but it’s not their story. It’s worth referring to till you get the different characters and their relationships sorted, and then the narrative bowls along. I longed for a family tree, and actually began to compile one, when I discovered one at the end of the book. I have to admit that the cast of characters baffled me at first.
I was determined not to re-read The Skylarks’ War before I read The Swallows’ Flight. This is their story, and this time it is Ruby, scarred and self-conscious from the start, and introverted Kate, who win our hearts. The children we met and loved in the first book step back and allow their own children to star. The 10-year-olds become 26-year-olds, the First World War is echoed in the Second World War.
The adored honorary uncle, Uncle Rupert, comes and goes, bringing fun and presents. All she can think of doing is to be extraordinarly brave. Everyone, she notes, is doing something about the war effort. Kate is the quiet youngest child in a family of six children, assiduously writing her diary. With or without him we move from family to family, from our much-loved Clarry in Bristol to our new heroine Ruby, who is evacuated to live with her cousin Kate in Plymouth.
His plight, his future, and his personality make him as important as any other character in the narrative. We are in a backyard in London, where a tied-up and seemingly abandoned dog lives. In between Erik and Hans’ story, we have a wealth of other characters and settings. Erik, in contrast, lives alone with his mother. Hans has two sisters, Lisa and Frieda, who are as annoying to them as sisters always are to two inseparable boys, and there is the ever-present kind, funny Uncle Karl. Our sympathies and interest are always with them as they grow up. Erik will be head keeper at Berlin zoo, and Hans will have a very expensive pastry stall just outside the gates.
For Hans and Erik, nothing is simpler than their plans for the future. His best friend Hans does his best to help him, and for the next 16 years we keep in touch with them and their deep friendship. It starts, surprisingly and cleverly, in Berlin, in 1931, where 10-year-old Erik is bartering cards for flies to feed two fledgling swallows.
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