Oh boy. There are loads of bummed readers reviewing this on amazon.com. Huh. I found this title through a good mention in The New Yorker...I think. It sounded great! Once it was in my hands I started getting apprehensive that it's creep factor might be higher than I am comfortable with. Wrong-o! It's really a gentle war aftermath story, with desperation, longing and poignancy. I suppose it could be a romance. I am nearly always drawn to stories of this time and place, and this was done well with details and names of things fitting out the scene truly. You do have to read between the lines a bit, but it's a very short and smooth read. Certainly leaves you thinking about all those souls lost in any enormous event like war. What do they do as we go on living? And those who do go on might not be coping as they seem to be... ( )

To be honest, the cover probably is the thing that got me to buy the book. Sure, the blurb about a time slip, an RAF ghost, and a mystery did help, but I can't help it, I absolutely love that cover. So, it is with a bit of a heavy heart that I write this review. It's not like the book is bad, it's just not so fantastic that I hoped it to be.

I did like the story, I just did not love it. I found the premise of the story intriguing and it started off good. But, looking back to reading the book do I have to admit that I did not really fall for the story. I wonder if it had been better if it had been more to the story. It's not a thick book, it just takes a couple of hours to read the book. So, everything moved forward rather quickly, getting to know Isabel and the rest of the characters, meeting the ghost, learning the truth and then the end. And, sure, it's a tragic truth, but I never really got to know Alec, and I thought that was a miss. It would have been wonderful to have learned more about him through flashbacks. Rather than just the first chapter and then through ghostly recollections. I wanted to be moved by the book, but that never happened.

It's a so-so book. I liked it, but if feels like it had potential that never was achieved.

Read this review and others on A Bookaholic Swede ( )

Strangely low-key. Not clear if it's a story of lonely depression or a haunting, which is maybe the point. Heroine's husband is really a bore, the "ghost" only slightly less so, with cheery bookishness and an enthusiasm for motorbikes.. The sinister figure is the landlady on whom the plot turns. ( )

World War 2 ghost story, set in 1952
By sally tarbox on 18 June 2017
Format: Kindle Edition
Maybe 3.5* for this very readable ghost story. It's 1952, winter, and newly-wed Isabel Carey is living in unlovely digs with her preoccupied GP husband and a landlady she dislikes. When she unearths an old greatcoat stashed in a cupboard, she uses it as an additional blanket in bed. And suddenly, and mysteriously, she starts getting visits from a WW2 airman...

"There was a man outside the window. She saw the pallor of his face first, as it seemed to bob against the glass, too high up to belong to a man who had his feet on the ground...The level of the ground there was higher than the floor inside. That was why he seemed to float in mid-air. A man in a greatcoat..."

The 'wrinkle in time' means that the local airbase, a ruin in 1952, is once again a hub of activity. Isabel seems to be morphing into the woman whom Alec the airman was seeing back in the War. It's a slightly confusing plotline, but one that Helen Dunmore manages to handle.
Read in one sitting; it's a short novel so I didn't get particularly wrapped up in the characters, but the plotline keeps you reading. ( )

It’s just after WWII; rations are still in place, food and fuel shortages are still the norm, decent housing is hard to come by, blackout curtains still hang in some windows, the bombings are still a fresh memory and some don’t realize it’s all over. Newlyweds Isabel and Philip Carey have moved in to a small rental flat in Yorkshire, where Philip is beginning his medical practice. More often than not Isabel finds herself alone in the tiny, cold flat. Looking for more blankets that she is sure the stingy landlady has hidden away, Isabel discovers a “Greatcoat” tucked into the back of a cupboard. Although it is not a blanket Isabel decides the heavy wool coat will suit just fine to keep her warm through the night. Soon enough Isabel becomes aware that the coat brings with it more than warmth and learns that sometimes people are not exactly as they appear.

This was a short book, a simple story and, easily read. The scene Ms. Dunmore sets is contained; a small flat in a small village and, down the road, a deserted airfield. As far as the characters go, there are four main ones and everyone else is pretty much a walk-on. The limited cast and venue of the book aid in building the mystery and the suspense because it is clear to the reader that nothing goes unnoticed (almost). The mystery and suspense carry through to a very satisfying ending that I really didn’t see coming until, well … until the very end.
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