Book review: Strangers in Time
FInding solace
David Baldacci is a skilful and highly successful writer of crime fiction - this book, Strangers in Time, is not that kind of book. Yes, there is a crime, and yes, the lead characters do get to solve it, but in a way that is the least important aspect of this. Much more important than the crime is the setting, and much more important than the setting are the main characters - it is, at its heart, a book about three people coming together to find friendship at a time of turmoil.
Baldacci’s story is set in war torn London during World War II, and follows the lives of Molly, who tries to find her way home after being evacuated, Charlie, who scavenges a living in the ruins of the East End docks, and Ignatius Oliver, the widowed and broken-hearted owner of the Book Keep, a bookshop somehow surviving during the Blitz.
This kind of historical crime fiction is a new departure for Baldacci, and a highly successful one - he deploys all his skill in tension-building and plot-crafting to develop an intricate web of relationships which finally lead these three characters to come together and find solace and meaning within the chaotic world around them.
Baldacci himself says of what he wanted to convey through this book:
“It is a lesson to us all that no matter how dire times may be, including a world war, we need not go through them alone. There is courage, strength and empathy when we stand not simply by ourselves, but hand in hand with others we have come to trust.”
Strangers in Time is an engaging and moving story of three human beings in a time of trouble.
But - without wishing in any way to diminish the skill and power of Baldacci’s book - I feel it has to be said that, though World War II and the London Blitz may be behind us, times of trouble are very much still with us and around us - and solace and meaning are not always easy to find.
