“A book is a gift you can open again and again.”
Three Hours by Rosamund Lupton
This tells of a school in lockdown as a gunman threatens the safety of the children and teachers. This is not an American school but one in the Somerset.
At the centre of the story is a teenaged Syrian boy, Rafi, who arrived here from his war-torn country, shielding and protecting his young brother through all the trauma of escaping, leaving their family and finding their way to safety. Already these two young people have endured so much, yet Rafi finds the courage to deal with this unimaginable situation.
The school staff also exhibit true bravery, forcing themselves to be calm and to keep the children both safe and positive, while the head teacher, who, at the opening of the book has been shot, thinks only of his pupils and his staff as he lies in the school library fighting for his life. The love displayed by the pupils for each other, the staff for the children in their care and the parents whose children are in this terrifying ordeal is so powerful that it drives the story on and gives us all hope that the outcome will not be hopeless. We also learn of the difficulties of the police who need to move so carefully to apprehend a gunman without endangering further the lives of those in the school.
The juxta position of tension and love, fear and courage make this a real page-turner and the writing is simply beautiful. A wonderful thriller, but predominantly a book about love. ‘Love is the most powerful thing there is….
Paperback, Penguin, £9.99
The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak
In 1974 on the island of Cyprus, two teenagers, from opposite sides of a divided land, meet at a tavern in the city they both call home. The tavern is the only place that Kostas, who is Greek and Christian, and Defne, who is Turkish and Muslim, can meet, in secret. In the centre of the tavern, growing through a cavity in the roof, is a fig tree.
This tree will witness their hushed, happy meetings, their silent, surreptitious departures; and the tree will be there when the war breaks out, when the capital is reduced to rubble, when the teenagers vanish and break apart. Decades later in north London, sixteen-year-old Ada Kazantzakis has never visited the island where her parents were born. Desperate for answers, she seeks to untangle years of secrets, separation and silence, but the only connection she has to the land of her ancestors is a Ficus Carica growing in the back garden of their home.
This is a beautifully written book which explores the lasting impact the civil war had on Cyprus and the search for healing. Paperback, Penguin, £9.99
Still Life by Sarah Winman
As bombs fall around them, two strangers meet in the ruined wine cellar of a Tuscan villa and share an extraordinary evening. Ulysses Temper is a young British soldier, Evelyn Skinner a 64-year-old art historian living life on her own terms. She has come to salvage paintings from the wreckage of war and relive memories of her youth when her heart was stolen by an Italian maid in a particular room with a view. The link between these two lasts for decades with the story stretching from 1944 to 1979 and set in both Florence and London. The book is full of unforgettable characters and explores the mutability and constancy of love, ambivalent and devoted parenting and the beauty of art. Paperback, HarperCollins, £8.99