An Act of Love

Brilliant read! Well written.

Carol Drinkwater is one of my favourite writers. I have read and loved her Olive Farm series of memoirs and three of her adult fiction novels: The Forgotten Summer, The Lost Girl, and The House on the Edge of the Cliff. I couldn’t wait to get my hands on a copy of An Act of Love, her latest novel. What a story! I am in awe of what Carol Drinkwater has achieved with this novel. I hope this review does the book justice.

Set in the summer of 1943, An Act of Love is a story of bravery, courage, first love, and finding yourself. It is told from the point of view of Sara, a 17-year-old displaced in France from her native Poland with her mother and father. At the beginning of the story, the family moves from Nice to Ville-Vesubie, a mountain village deemed safer than the coastal towns. It is also a potential route to safety in another country. Although Ville-Vesubie is fictitious for this story, it is not dissimilar to those villages in the Alps. Through Sara, we learn the story of Jewish refugees with no home/state, the free area of France during WW2, village life, the activities of the French Resistance.

From the way that Carol Drinkwater has written the story and how Sara’s character is crafted, it is clear that she walked in Sara’s shoes whilst writing her. It’s almost as though she has embodied her characters. This is a treat as a reader because I became Sara, living her journey and taking on on her emotions every time I opened the book. We, as readers, are invited to share Sara’s internal monologue, trusted with her innermost thoughts and feelings about the war, the villagers, her hopes for the future.

Carol Drinkwater’s level of observation of people and the natural world is as vivid and as deep as ever. As is her attention to detail. There is no doubt that she has spent hours sitting in one of the villages and watching the comings and going’s of the community. There is no detail left out, and her detailed description plays with each of our senses. Her experience both in front of and behind the camera is on every page. She has a way of writing that makes the reader feel like they’re looking through a camera lens, watching a film play out on the pages - I would love to see this story on screen.

It’s evident from reading An Act of Love that a vast amount of research has gone into this book. I love to read stories set in WW2, but I knew nothing about the Second World War in the south of France, how villagers in the mountains risked their own lives in attempt to keep the Jewish immigrants safe and how the war was in this part of France. It takes skill for a writer to craft a story around a wealth of research so it doesn’t feel like they are trying to show the reader how much research they have done. An Act of Love is a fine example of a fictional story expertly crafted around actual historical events.

An Act of Love has it all. From the elegant cover, the considerable amount of research, the skilfully crafted plot to the sophisticated writing, the believable characters and an incredible sense of place. In my opinion, this is Carol Drinkwater’s best book yet. I have loved all her previous work, but there is something about the depth in this book that is more profound. I mean, the fiction novels I mentioned above are excellent, but An Act of Love has raised the bar.