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War on the Margins (2008)

de Libby Cone

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559467,204 (4.05)37
Drawn from authentic World War Two documents, broadcasts and private letters, 'War on the Margins' tells of the often-overlooked Nazi occupation of Jersey.
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Es mostren 1-5 de 9 (següent | mostra-les totes)
This book was intriguing from a historical point of view; it explores an area I’ve not seen done much in historical fiction. As the only part of British soil occupied by the Nazis, the Channel Islands give us a microcosm of how occupation might have been if Britain had been taken. The author utilizes first hand sources and empathetic storytelling to give us a window into a dangerous, spellbinding world.

I liked how the author was balanced in her portrayal of the Channel Islanders. Both the collaborators and the resistors were given page time, giving us a view into both sides of the Nazi occupation. The hard reality of war comes to vivid life as well: food shortages, round-ups, life on the run, and the slave labor of the Nazi era. Enough that the reader is sucked in immediately and lives the story along with the characters.

I liked the characters generally, though I felt there was a weird balance of the POVs that did the book a disservice. Marlene and Peter, our two fictional “leads”, are the heart of the book. Through their eyes and hearts, the reader feels like they’re experiencing the story rather than just reading it. They read like two people who get swept up into the epic that is warfare and resistance, tugging the reader along by the heartstrings.

However, there is too much emphasis and page time given to the POVs of our historically real figures like Lucy, Suzanne, and Albert. Lucy and Suzanne play a big part in the story, taking Marlene in and being driving forces behind Resistance. They could be considered leads in the story as well. So their POVs have merit.

However, they take up so much page time, along with other real figures, that Marlene and Peter read as secondary characters at times. Other POVs like Albert and Mary Erica were just superfluous, in my opinion. They were important figures and played a intriguing part in the history of the Nazi occupation of the Channel Islands. But for this book, they were extraneous and unneeded. Marlene and Peter’s story got lost in the shuffle of history at times which is a shame.

The author pays attention to her history and research, which is much appreciated by this WWII history buff. I liked her incorporation of first hand sources and POVs of real historical figures. Yet, those very same POVs drown out our fictional figures, which are the heart of the story and how the reader invests themselves into the story (at least for me). So an intriguing read for the history, but needs work for the fictional stuff. ( )
  Sarah_Gruwell | Jan 14, 2016 |
Libby Cone is brilliant at depicting the struggles and adversities the Jews of Jersey had to endure during the Nazi regime’s takeover during World War II. She introduces many little known facts and historical references within War on the Margins. I was deeply touched by the plight of those whose lives were devastated and/or those who were killed. The intelligent, compelling and sober book is a must read for World War II and Shoah/Holocaust history buffs, and for those who want to gain a more in-depth insight into the mechanics of the events and daily struggles that occurred on the Channel Islands.

I want to thank Libby Cone for sending me a copy of War on the Margins. I am grateful to have read it, and appreciate her sending me her compelling book. Thank you. ( )
  LorriMilli | Oct 21, 2010 |
This rather lovely book, which weaves fact and fiction, tells the story of the inhabitants of Jersey during World War II, and in particular, the Jewish people living on the island.

As people are forced to register as Jewish and find themselves subjected to all the hatred of the Nazi regime, some people try to flee for their life, many go into hiding (often in the cellars of non-Jewish friends, who risk their own lives by helping them). Many are deported, and many perish.

The book tells the story of many of the inhabitants, but focuses mainly on Marlene Zimmer, a young girl with a Jewish father, who tries to outrun the authorities. She is taken in by two of the other main characters, Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore (the aliases of Lucille Schwob and Suzanne Malherbe, step-sisters and lovers. The three women aid the Resistance, picking up scraps of news on their forbidden wirelesses, passing information to other citizens, and encouraging German soldiers to desert. Also featuring prominently in the story is Peter, a Polish Jew who finds himself transported from one prison to another.

The official documents in this novel are real, as are the love letters which Suzanne and Lucille write to each other. This mixture of real life and fiction underlines the horrors of war in Jersey. The book is told in clean and direct language, but it is very evocative and I found myself feeling very moved. Some of the measures taken against Jews were difficult to imagine – not being able to have or profit from their own businesses, not being able to go into shops or theatres, and only being allowed to go shopping between 3pm – 4pm. (Sadly, we know only too well that these were nowhere near the worst atrocities visited upon them.)

As well as the main characters, the stories of more peripheral characters are also told, which made for a fuller picture of life in Jersey as a whole, rather than just a handful of residents.

Overall, this is a book I would highly recommend. Eloquent writing and a subject that lingers in the mind make this an excellent telling of an important story. ( )
  Ruth72 | Oct 20, 2010 |
This is a well-written, well-researched, easy to read but hard to forget story about the hardships endured by Jersey Islanders during World War II, particularly those of Jewish (whether real or suspected) descent.

The story is told from the perspectives of several residents, particularly Marlene, a clerk in the Aliens Registration Office and Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, surrealist Jewish artists and lovers-real historic figures-who fled France, and became part of the Resistance movement on the island. Their letters form the basis for much of the novel.

Other characters are developed well to represent the population who starved, hid (and hid their neighbors), listened hopelessly and hopefully every night on their forbidden and concealed wirelesses and prayed to be liberated. The stories of imprisonment and trials of the Resistance members, and the eventual despair of soldiers adds to the perspective. Ms. Cone gives us a small but stunning view into the minds of those involved in this oft forgotten aspect of the war. If you enjoyed the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, you will find this adds another and very different dimension to the story.

While it could easily have been just another novel about people enduring torture, starvation, and privation, about the Holocaust, about man's inhumanity to man, it wasn't. The story of bravery, treachery, and the effect of all of this (good and bad) on the human psyche, how every act-whether well-intentioned or not- has an impact that is often unforeseeable is the real story. It is a story very well told. ( )
1 vota tututhefirst | Aug 20, 2010 |
It’s 1940. A young woman working in the Aliens Office in Jersey reads the order to begin taking registrations of Jews. Does this order apply to me? she wonders. Her father was Jewish, but she has never practiced the faith and doesn’t have more than two Jewish grandparents, which the order says deems a person Jewish. For this young woman, Marlene, life in occupied Jersey raises a host of moral questions, of which this is only the first. In her novel, War on the Margins, Libby Cone explores these questions, using the lives of real-life Jersians, as well as some composite characters like Marlene.

Marlene’s dilemma soon lands her on the doorstep of the French surrealist lesbian artists Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore. These two women, both real-life figures, are themselves Jewish, although they did not register. They draw Marlene into resistance work, creating fliers encouraging soldiers to desert and surreptitiously sneaking them into their pockets. As the novel goes on, readers meet Peter, a Polish prisoner whom the Germans bring to Jersey as slave labor, and Erica, a woman the authorities suspect of being Jewish but who has failed to register.

This novel was absorbing right from the start. It was developed out of Cone’s research for her MA in Jewish Studies, and she fills the novel with original documents from the time. And of course the situation itself is fascinating. I didn’t know anything much about the occupation of the Channel Islands until I listened to The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society last year. In many ways, I found this book to be a more satisfying examination of the topic.

In the early chapters, I did find that I had some problems with the writing, but it wasn’t a problem as the book went on, and there are even a couple of rather nice pieces of writing in the later chapters. I wouldn’t say the prose is stellar, but it gets the job done. The only other problem I had was that the multiple storylines didn’t mesh together very well.

The women’s resistance activities raised one of the most interesting threads. A few of their actions seemed morally questionable, being more about revenge and anger than about weakening the occupying force. But then, much to my surprise, events conspired to make the characters think about what they had done—to realize that their acts didn’t just affect the Nazis, that maybe there were consequences they couldn’t see. This added a thought-provoking layer to the narrative that I much appreciated.

See my complete review at Shelf Love. ( )
1 vota teresakayep | Jul 23, 2010 |
Es mostren 1-5 de 9 (següent | mostra-les totes)
“Suzanne” and “Lucille” are two bewigged bohemians who bring the best out of Marlene — and high praise to Libby Cone for exquisitely enshrining their genuine wartime contribution. In real Channel Island history, they were Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, Jewish lesbian lovers and artists who together defied the Germans, chalking on walls Churchill’s ubiquitous V for victory.

Their tireless propaganda prompted soldiers to desert, so landing the colourful pair in Nazi cells, under sentence of death. Libby Cone breathes life into the poetic exploits of these “surrealist sisters” and into the transformation of Marlene — a victory V in itse
 
There are many eye-opening aspects of the story: the progressive deterioriation of the islanders’ diets as supplies become scarce (you will never look at a swede in the same way again); the shocking conditions in the Organization Todt work camps, with the terrible irony that men were worked to death to build hospitals for German soldiers; the decline in German morale after D-Day and the pitiful state that islanders and occupiers alike were reduced to after the link to the French mainland was cut. Cone tells her tale with understated empathy and never loses sight of the human dimensions (on all sides of the conflict).

War in the Margins will ultimately leave you asking yourself one question: how would you have acted if it had been you? An excellently researched and still very affecting read.
afegit per reademwritem | editaBookgeeks, Simon Appleby (Jul 20, 2009)
 
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Drawn from authentic World War Two documents, broadcasts and private letters, 'War on the Margins' tells of the often-overlooked Nazi occupation of Jersey.

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