Conner Street’s War by Harry Bowling

This is really more a series of vignettes rather than a conventional novel.  It is a little like Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood in that it looks at the lives of inhabitants in a certain time and place. However, it lacks the irony though there is pathos and humour.  

We can learn much about life in London during World War II: air raid shelters, the bombing of the docks, evacuation, bringing children home from evacuation, the ARP, food shortages, the Black Market. The novel is full of characters fighting their own battles with their circumstances.       

  

There is an authenticity in the text that make these scenarios real for the reader.  

A useful read.