Title: Everyone Brave is Forgiven

Author: Chris Cleave

Genre: Historical Fiction

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Format: Hardcover

Pages: 418

Rating: 4.5/5 stars

Warning: Mature content in book. Parents please be advised.

Synopsis (Goodreads):

A spellbinding novel about three unforgettable individuals thrown together by war, love, and their search for belonging in the ever-changing landscape of WWII London.

It’s 1939 and Mary, a young socialite, is determined to shock her blueblood political family by volunteering for the war effort. She is assigned as a teacher to children who were evacuated from London and have been rejected by the countryside because they are infirm, mentally disabled, or—like Mary’s favorite student, Zachary—have colored skin.

Tom, an education administrator, is distraught when his best friend, Alastair, enlists. Alastair, an art restorer, has always seemed far removed from the violent life to which he has now condemned himself. But Tom finds distraction in Mary, first as her employer and then as their relationship quickly develops in the emotionally charged times. When Mary meets Alastair, the three are drawn into a tragic love triangle and—while war escalates and bombs begin falling around them—further into a new world unlike any they’ve ever known.

A sweeping epic with the kind of unforgettable characters, cultural insights, and indelible scenes that made Little Bee so incredible, Chris Cleave’s latest novel explores the disenfranchised, the bereaved, the elite, the embattled. Everyone Brave Is Forgiven is a heartbreakingly beautiful story of love, loss, and incredible courage.

Review:

This book was unlike anything I expected. When I read the synopsis, I expected it to be like every other War love story, with the woman left at home, and the man off fighting. But it was so much more than that.

Mary leaves school when World War Two starts to join the cause, but she gets assigned as a teacher. She is disappointed as she thought she was going to make a greater contribution to the war effort, but in the end she realizes that teaching the students who are left behind in London is very important. That really struck home to me because as a teacher, I want to make sure that all my students feel like they matter, and that is exactly what Mary wanted.

While Mary is the main focus of the novel, there are other important characters as well, including Tom, who works in the war office but feels guilty for not joining up, and Alastair, his flatmate, who is stationed in Malta.

Another thing I liked about the book was that it focused on racial issues in London during the war. The people of colour were not treated the same in the evacuation and the bombings of London, and Mary notices that they suffered a lot more than the rich white folk. Mary states, “We are a nation of glorious cowards, ready to battle any evil but our own.” I love this quote, and I thought it represented what Mary was trying to get people to understand. She was looked down upon for wanting to teach black children, and she didn’t care about the colour of their skin; she just wanted to teach!

Happy reading!