Cover: Matthew Land / Steve Wells
Joining the ranks
The Second World War, especially the UK ‘Home Front’, has served children’s fiction very well as subject matter. Or perhaps that should be vice versa. Whichever, it would be easy to compile a substantial list of wartime-set books that not only provide outstanding reads but also serve to sensitively bring awareness of this terrible period to new generations. ‘Lest we forget.’ It is important.
However the sheer number of already existing great books in this area make it difficult for authors today to offer true originality and provide fresh perspectives and insights into the period. One recent offering that succeeded brilliantly in exactly this was Phil Earl’s When the Sky Falls. Now, in a quite different, but equally affecting way, we have another.
Best yet
Dan Smith has previous written two MG wartime novels, My brother’s Secret and My Friend the Enemy. Both are outstanding reads and very effectively raise questions about who is or isn’t an enemy. Yet both could justifiably be called conventional war stories. Nisha’s War is markedly not conventional and is a particularly fine novel as a result. It is a strange amalgam of elements, but that is its strength, its power. It is in many ways more sensitive than this author’s earlier work, more nuanced, more layered.
The main strand of the narrative is set on an small island off the Northumbrian coast which owes much to the geography of Lindisfarne, especially in its tidal causeway to the mainland, although in many respects fictionally transformed. At this remote and rather desolate place a young girl, Nisha, arrives as a refugee from her previous home in war-torn Malaya, having escaped through Singapore. In a darkly lyrical story, she attempts to ensure a favourable outcome for her herself and her desperately ravaged family through interaction with the island’s mysterious child ‘ghost’. This not so much a supernatural story, though, as a mystical one that explores Nisha’s journey towards acceptance and hope through a multi-layering of metaphor and emotional reality.
More than just a war story
The novel is, however, yet richer. The island narrative strand is counterpointed by a horrifically realistic diary account of Nisha’s evacuation from Singapore which involves scenes that very strongly pre-echo recent news images of the appalling desperation at Kabul airport. This gives the story both grounding in the grim events of WWII and considerable contemporary resonance and relevance. Nisha’s War is a story about a refugee, and the need for acceptance in a new country, as much as it is about the war itself.
The mixture of historical and specultive fiction (almost magical realism) could be a confusion for young readers, but here it is so well handled by Dan Smith that distinctions are perfectly clear. The imaginative elements of this story only serve to enhance and extend the impact of it underlying reality. It is insightful, engaging and deeply moving.
As befits a novel for young readers, the outcome is positive and encouraging, without being over-sentimental. The whole is a triumph of intelligent fiction, made accessible for children, and Nisha’s War joins the finest examples of children’s literature on these important themes.
Final note:
Dan Smith is a prolific writer and his output is a smorgasbord of fiction for different audiences and tastes. Also in the children’s category, his She Wolf , set in Viking-invaded Northumbria, is a great read and a brilliant choice for bringing this distant period of our history to vivid life. Very different, but outstanding of their type, his Crooked Oak Mysteries would be excellent for enticing less experienced or reluctant readers. Indeed, they will provide exciting escapism for any children needing it, as most do at some time or other.