Review: Three Words for Goodbye
I have a running joke with Hazel Gaynor, that her books reduce me to tears, writes Brian Byrne. They do. Because though romance and historical fiction are not my normal read, I’m nevertheless a sucker for a happy, or sad, storyline. I’m a secret softie, really, even if a complex political thriller would be my normal books preference.
When Hazel and her sometimes writing partner Heather Webb get together to write a book, there is then a pair of them conspiring to get my face wet. With their latest co-production, Three Words for Goodbye, they did it again.
None of the foregoing is really relevant to the book, which is another professional and absorbing production from the Gaynor-Webb catalogue. Just as are the Gaynor solus volumes which have annexed an ever-increasing space on my bookshelf since Hazel started it all in 2012 with The Girl Who Came Home.
History and the world wars have been a rich vein of inspiration for her, and for the writing duo. In this story together they bring the dark tapestry of looming WW2 into a human perspective through the eyes of two sisters from America, Clara and Madeleine. They are put together on a journey through Europe by their grandmother, who wants them by proxy to tidy up affairs from her own youth. And in the process to hopefully learn more about each other. It would be unfair to say more about the story, and risk delivering spoilers. It is nicely complicated in many emotional ways, so read the book yourself to get the full enjoyment of the skilful way a short few weeks in the lives of these two young women are put together.
In addition to entertaining, Three Words for Goodbye addresses social perspectives which, while of the story's time, can still resonate more than eight decades on. The politics of the late 1930s, the business practices, the international warmongering, all have their parallels today. As do still — admittedly to less extent in more enlightened parts of the world — the constrained place and perception of women. The existence of role models who influence their possible alternative futures also remains important for women today. And how the revelations from someone else’s hidden past can change destinies is a constant in life's experience, for both women and men.
This is a 'lockdown book' and I’m fascinated about how Hazel and Heather must have put this together from their covid-restricted working desks on two sides of the Atlantic. Did each take the role of a different sister? And if so, which did who? I will in due course ask. Meantime, the deft merging of their protagonists' personal experiences in the gathering international gloom and doom is an exemplar of how properly to meld fiction and history.
Three Words for Goodbye made me once again steal time from my other activities in order to keep reading it. At the same time not wanting to reach the end. Not because I knew there would be tears, rather that when you’re enjoying something, you don’t want it to finish.
Three Words for Goodbye is available locally in Woodbine Books, and in all good bookshops here and abroad. A perfect gift for Christmas, for yourself or for someone else you know will appreciate the telling of a good historical romance story.
When Hazel and her sometimes writing partner Heather Webb get together to write a book, there is then a pair of them conspiring to get my face wet. With their latest co-production, Three Words for Goodbye, they did it again.
None of the foregoing is really relevant to the book, which is another professional and absorbing production from the Gaynor-Webb catalogue. Just as are the Gaynor solus volumes which have annexed an ever-increasing space on my bookshelf since Hazel started it all in 2012 with The Girl Who Came Home.
History and the world wars have been a rich vein of inspiration for her, and for the writing duo. In this story together they bring the dark tapestry of looming WW2 into a human perspective through the eyes of two sisters from America, Clara and Madeleine. They are put together on a journey through Europe by their grandmother, who wants them by proxy to tidy up affairs from her own youth. And in the process to hopefully learn more about each other. It would be unfair to say more about the story, and risk delivering spoilers. It is nicely complicated in many emotional ways, so read the book yourself to get the full enjoyment of the skilful way a short few weeks in the lives of these two young women are put together.
In addition to entertaining, Three Words for Goodbye addresses social perspectives which, while of the story's time, can still resonate more than eight decades on. The politics of the late 1930s, the business practices, the international warmongering, all have their parallels today. As do still — admittedly to less extent in more enlightened parts of the world — the constrained place and perception of women. The existence of role models who influence their possible alternative futures also remains important for women today. And how the revelations from someone else’s hidden past can change destinies is a constant in life's experience, for both women and men.
This is a 'lockdown book' and I’m fascinated about how Hazel and Heather must have put this together from their covid-restricted working desks on two sides of the Atlantic. Did each take the role of a different sister? And if so, which did who? I will in due course ask. Meantime, the deft merging of their protagonists' personal experiences in the gathering international gloom and doom is an exemplar of how properly to meld fiction and history.
Three Words for Goodbye made me once again steal time from my other activities in order to keep reading it. At the same time not wanting to reach the end. Not because I knew there would be tears, rather that when you’re enjoying something, you don’t want it to finish.
Three Words for Goodbye is available locally in Woodbine Books, and in all good bookshops here and abroad. A perfect gift for Christmas, for yourself or for someone else you know will appreciate the telling of a good historical romance story.
Photographs use Policy — Privacy Policy
