If I Could Tell You

December 15, 2016
Attempting to mix the historical tenor of television's Foyle's War with the darkly romantic yearnings of Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina, Wilhide (Ashenden, 2013) follows the travails of an upper-middle-class British housewife whose comfortable life is shattered by the combination of World War II and her adulterous affair. Despite the growing likelihood of war, in the summer of 1939 Julia Compton lives in relative contentment with her handsome solicitor husband, Richard, and beloved 9-year-old son, Peter, from whom she maintains a reserved distance while dreading his imminent return to boarding school. Thanks to a trusty housekeeper, Julia has few responsibilities and spends her days shopping, visiting her widowed friend Fiona, and playing the piano. Then a film crew arrives in the Comptons' small coastal town to film a documentary on fishing. When Julia meets the director, Dougie Birdsall, who puts her in the film, she immediately feels a connection: "New and jolting. Both at the same time." Passion overrides her sense of propriety and most of her sense of responsibility as she and Dougie carry on an intense affair that is both physical attraction and "a meeting of minds." Inevitably, Richard finds out and kicks her out. Dougie is also married, but his wife (inured to his philandering tendencies) is conveniently spending the war, which has formally broken out, in Canada with their daughters. Julia moves into his London flat and more bohemian lifestyle. While the follow-the-dots romantic melodrama of the initial affair grows wearisome, the novel's energy picks up once Julia's in London. As her relationship with Dougie begins to sour and the trials of war intensify, she slowly learns to stand on her own and to understand what matters most in life. As an aside, the rendering of Peter's reaction to his belated discovery of his parents' split is particularly heart-wrenching. Despite a slow start, Wilhide creates a closely detailed, finely shaded portrayal of love and war that is anti-romantic but far from cynical.

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Starred review from January 1, 2017
War threatens at the edges of Julia Compton's peaceful life at the northern periphery of London in 1939. The underlying tension in Wilhide's (Ashenden, 2013) second novel is further exacerbated by another interruption: a film crew appears, and the filmmaker, Dougie, finds Julia irresistible and takes footage of her. Through fits and starts, they meet and part, with Julia vowing to never see Dougie again. Yet, one day, she leaves her husband and young son, forsaking all security to be with Dougie, who has just sent his own wife and children to Canada, ostensibly to keep them safe. Julia is not domestic, and Dougie is poor, ill-mannered, and a womanizer, and readers soon realize that Julia has made a terrible mistake. While comparisons to Anna Karenina could be made, Julia is made of stronger stuff, and eventually, she crafts a useful life and is able to discover some measure of peace. The author's careful attention to period detail, complemented by clean prose, is a special strength of this book. The effects of wartime ruin are vividly rendered, and one can almost taste the dust falling through the stairs during bombing raids.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)