The Swallows' Flight by Hilary McKay (Macmillan Children's Books)
Net Galley eProof
Back in 2018, when my reading stamina was at its lowest, Hilary McKay's The Skylarks' War held me captivated and was one of the first books that I managed to read from cover to cover in a weekend. It was a wonderful book and one that my mum and sister have also gone on to enjoy.
Skylarks' was a book about the lead up to the first world war and just after, whereas Swallows' is a story about the 1930s and world war two. The novel is a sequel to Skylarks' but moves on a generation and this time one narrative strand follows two German boys and we see the increasing grip of fascism on their lives.
As with the first book I quickly lost myself in this one and found it as engrossing as any sweeping adult book set in the same time period. There are a few coincidences that as an adult I saw coming but with fiction this good I don't mind. I really hope that this becomes a classic text for schools, it is a book that deserves the same reverence given to Carrie's War and Goodnight Mr Tom (and I love that book) and it is definitely deserves to be on any curriculum/reading list far more than the implausible (and borderline offensive) The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas.
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