Casualties / Lynne Reid Banks

from the publisher's site:

London, 1975

With her marriage at breaking point and worrying she is failing in her relationships with her teenage sons, Sue McClusky is at a crossroads.

So when Mariolain, an old friend of Sue’s, suggests the whole family come to stay with her in The Netherlands, Sue accepts immediately.

Sue and Cal soon see their own troubles reflected in the marriage of Mariolain and her husband Niels.

But as confidences grow between the couples, it becomes clear that the Dutch couple’s problems are more deep-seated than Sue could have ever imagined.

Thirty-five years earlier, both Mariolain and Niels suffered unimaginably during the Second World War.

As Sue learns the harrowing truth, she begins to feel that maybe the shocks of the past can help heal the rifts of the present…

A number of things about this novel puzzle me, the chief one being what motivated the author to interpose an Anglo-American couple between the Dutch couple and us — in effect telling their stories at one remove. I understand that Sue serves to draw out Mariolain's confidences, but was it necessary to insert unsufferable Cal and their two barely civilised sons into the narrative? I wonder whether the story of Niels' parents would have been more affecting if he'd revealed it directly to Sue, instead of divulging it "offstage" to Cal, who then fills Sue in on it.

Over the course of much of the novel, we keep switching between the horrors of WWII and Sue whining about her family, which to my mind only cheapens the suffering being described and its repercussions. Although there are some heart-wrenching moments, I found myself increasingly irritated with the adult characters' puerile behaviour and wondering where all this was leading — which, as it turns out, is an ending that offers no resolution at all.

[I received an electronic copy of this novel from the publisher, Sapere Books, in exchange for my honest opinion.]

rating: **