A Jealous God - reviews
From the Sunday Times:
"The 1946 bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem is at
the heart of Simon Mawer's A Jealous God... Mawer, with a wonderful
feeling for place and time, cuts deftly between life in Cyprus and
England, and post-war Palestine... The story is as dense and gripping
as a thriller..."
Margaret Walters
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From New Statesman:
"The central figure is Helen Harding, an English girl who never
knew her father, Andrew - a British officer who perished in the savage
bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem.... Her attempts to recapture
the past through her relationships with her stepbrother, Michael,
and Andrew's cynical war buddy, Dennis Killin, are doomed to a frustrating
limbo. The novel twists and turns between these narratives, allowing
us a kind of God-like eye to see the connections that Helen, kept
from the truth by her dying mother, Lorna, may never find out.
"Happenstance found me reading the novel on a trip to Israel
and its emerging shadow, Palestine, during the latest rumble of the
ancient feud. Mawer describes a roadblock at Latrun, in 1946; there
is still a roadblock, some miles up the road, with nervous soldiers
once again scrutinising drivers' faces for their secret thoughts.
"Mawer is concerned, I think, with the dissonances that arise
from the meeting of Englishness - with its schizoid arrogance and
self-effacement - and old wars, ancient hatreds and their harsh loyalties.
The book is finely and intelligently written..."
Simon Louvish
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