Book Review: Maureen Lee's After the War Is Over

My attraction to the lives of people who lived through World War II continues, as I quickly read through Maureen Lee's After The War is Over.

It is the second book of hers that I've read and she has stuck to the same time zone and type of characters as that other book of hers that I've read.

It's actually a telenovaela-esque type of novel about three women who were close friends in the UK army during World War II and it tells the story of their lives right after the war in 1945 until they become senior citizens in the early 1970s!

That's almost 35 years of three different life stories to digest!

It can be quite a tedious read because there are so many characters as the three women have big families and they also end up having families of their own.

I swear at one point, I did not bother anymore to carefully identify who was who. I just wanted to see the events unravel, especially for my favorite characters.

Just like in an expansive telenovela with so many characters, one would normally just concentrate on the few characters one really cares about.

I also said telenovela-esque because the plot has every event in any writer's bag of tricks - a rape, an unwanted pregnancy, a baby boy given to the best friend, women behaving like Madame Bovary, etc etc. This book could actually work well as a TV miniseries.

There's always something salacious happening at every turn of the page. However, this is not Anna Karenina and there are no philosophical musings of any kind.

It's more like being a voyeur in the lives of people when life meant no gadgets to immediately spread the bad news, and when indiscreet affairs were still considered public scandals.

The theme of friendship and the importance of one's family are the things that make the book interesting, especially for Filipinos who hold these two things close to our hearts.

A Woman Reinvents Her Life in Au Revoir Liverpool

When I first bought this book, I thought it was just one of those romantic stories set in World War II. I was in for a real surprise!

Society has always been more cruel to women who philander as opposed to men - and such was the situation our protagonist, Jessica, finds herself in in 1930s Liverpool. Her mean husband throws her out of their house and takes their 2 children away from her. And worse, the man she slept with - is her mother's lover!! So her mother treats her icily after their one night stand was revealed!

Like any young mother, she almost went crazy without her kids, who were still very young, but slowly, she found her bearings with the help of her younger brother and some kind strangers.

What I love about her character is how she picked up the pieces of her shattered life. Soon, she had to leave Liverpool - since she felt like she was a pariah there - and she went to Paris. Then World War II breaks out!

Her character had to endure many challenges but what was beautiful is that she found herself, she found what her real strengths are, and really came into her own person. When before, she felt like she was just a behind the shadow of her rich and popular husband, now she really knew how to handle a household, run a business and discovered that she was really desirable after all!

While before, she used her husband as an emotional crutch - now that she was alone, she had to mature quickly and find the courage to solve the problems she was facing incessantly everyday.

The war taught her many things about loyalty, love for country, love for thy neighbor, and she really matured as a woman and as a mother.

When she returned to Liverpool after the war, she was now a totally different person than she was when she first left.