I really enjoyed the book, it was a really good story and the fact that it was factually correct made it all that more riveting. Funny thing, I was watching Cities of the Underworld and they were doing a show on Dublin and they actually talked about the ship full of Interned Prisoners that was sunk that he has in the book. That was amazing.

I can hardly wait for his next book. I am really looking forward to reading more of his work.

Again thanks for the book, I am going to pass it on to my dad to read because I know that he will really enjoy it too!

In EDITH'S WAR Andrew Smith has given us a very interesting story and he has told it very well! The novel takes place in two different time frames and two alternative settings, World War II in a small village outside Liverpool, England and Venice Italy in Oct.9,2002.Edith ,a young, grass-widowed war- bride, is the central character of the English chapters and her two grown sons are the focus of those set in Italy. As the story unfolds, the author takes us into Edith's war and her relationship with an Italian immigrant family, pafrticularly one of their sons who is interned in a nearby camp.

In Edith, the author has created a wonderful vibrant young woman who, as the war continues in its relentless way, does far more than just"carry on with life". With his fine eye for detail, Smith gives us a vivid and realistic picture of wartime England as well as painting an almost dreamlike atmosphere in autumnal Venice as the brothers wait for their mother and search for elusive truths of the effect of the war on their childhood days in Liverpool and on their lives in the present.

This is a novel well worth reading. Beautifully written, focused and with a good story leading to an intriguing finale, EDITH'S WAR is definitely a "must read". Hurry and get yourself a copy.

Edith Maguire spent the entirety of World War II at the front - the home front. Newly pregnant and living with her new mother-in-law and her younger son, she deals with the emotional roller coaster of being estranged from her own family and bonding with her new in-laws amidst bombings of the blitz on the rural outskirts of Liverpool. She is also dealing with practicalities of war like not having enough food to eat and the internment of the male members of family-like next-door neighbours, the Baccanellos, whose only crime was being of Italian descent. Alternating chapters follow her two grown sons, Will and Shamus, to Venice, where they get to know one another as older adults and learn of their mother’s life they never knew. Smith deftly draws you into the dynamics of several families both past and present, so you too, experience the curves life throws at them. It’s interesting to see how the constraints of war allows for freer expression and the freedom of peacetime sends many back to living the lives expected of them. A gripping and tender look at the war we thought we knew.

Smith is a sure hand with capturing the way human experience is shaped by tragedy and exceptional circumstance. We are so used to hearing about the experiences of war from the front lines that it is easy to forget about the ripples affected by such violent confrontation on a global scale. Those left behind, those considered a threat by their very own government and the children of wartime, in ways both literal and figurative, are wound together into a single narrative cord in Edith's War.

http://is.gd/brqQA