Reflections

I don’t think I’ve ever been so sad to leave a set of characters behind. After spending more than 1,000 pages with them between All Clear and its predecessor Blackout, most of it set during the Blitz of London with lots of high tension twists and turns, heartaches and triumphs, I feel like we’ve been through the war together and it’s hard to let go. With three time traveling historians as  protagonists and numerous less prominent but well developed supporting characters, both books have lots of varied Blitz experiences for readers to live through vicariously.

While at times the narrative seemed overly long, Willis is highly skilled at weaving plot lines together and involving you deeply in her characters’ lives such that the ending is a masterpiece of emotional catharsis. A distracted and clumsy Alan Turing, the code breaking genius of Bletchley Park, is among the notables who make brief cameo appearances, but most of the story involves ordinary people and their everyday acts of determined coping and homefront heroism. I listened to the audio version of All Clear and the narrator is absolutely wonderful and so very good at creating different voices that I still hear her in my head when reading the text.