Trapeze - Simon Mawer

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Trapeze - Simon Mawer (2012)

After my last failing to get me into the spirit of the second world war, I found this one drew me into the world of soldiers, spies and gas masks straight away.

Our young heroine is bought up bilingual and is selected to go on a secret mission into France, and make contact with a young man from her youth, who is important to the war effort.

I really enjoyed the beginning and end of the book, but I got a bit muddled in the middle, as for me I couldn't imagine the France that it described and there seemed a collection of fleeting characters that I couldn't picture.

3/5

The Glass Room - Simon Mawer

The Glass Room - Simon Mawer (2009)

Mainly set in Czechoslovakia in the 1930s, this story starts with Liesel and Viktor, a wealthy newly married couple meeting an architect on holiday in Venice. He plans for them the most modern of houses, a flat boxed one with a spectacular glass living room. It becomes a showcase and topic of conversation for many in the area, and when war intervenes the young couple now find that they must leave in order to avoid the advancing Germans.

Leaving with their friends, they find themselves first in Switzerland, and then they try to reach the US. Meanwhile the house is looked after by staff and is then taken over by first the Germans as a lab, the Russian and then the Czechs as a Gymnasium.

A clever mix of a war story that is not really about the war, but a story about the house and how it affects all those who live in it and how that connects all their lives. 3/5