When war was officially announced with Germany, Dorothy Linford decided that she should do what she could to help, and, despite her young age, she became a nurse. How was she to know that being transferred to Alexandra Palace to tend the Germans would change her life forever?
Falling in love with a German was not something that Dorothy had planned to do. And she knew that her family would never accept the match for obvious reasons, but also because her uncle had fought against the Germans in the war. Abandoned by her family, Dorothy and her beloved Franz, leave England to start their life together in Germany.
Dorothy's cousin, Louisa, has an absolutely appalling attitude, especially towards her parents. However, when life throws her a painful curveball, Louise must abandon her childish and rude behaviour. If she does not, she too will be turned away by her family.
The Lengthening Shadow had me hooked from the first chapter. It is a novel full of love, heartbreak, joy, and terror. With all the different characters, we get a glimpse into people’s lives in so many extraordinary circumstances. Dorothy moves to a country she has never visited before, to live among the people responsible for her uncle’s injuries; but the people in her village hadn’t done anything, had they? It had been the soldiers who had been under orders. Dorothy is an incredibly strong character, for as daunting as it is to leave everything she had ever known behind, to put in front of herself the challenge of learning a new language, a new culture, made her especially appealing. She would follow Franz to the end of the earth, if need be, and took each new challenge in her stride.
Louisa is an interesting character. At the start of the book, I did not like her. She was rude, spoilt, and her parents gave her too much leeway. However, it was this terrible personality that forced Louisa to change, to try to make up for everything she had done. It was this new Louisa, the one who realised who she was and tried her best to change, which I found more appealing. While Dorothy’s story involves physically putting herself in a new environment, Louisa desperately attempts to put this new version of herself into the same environment she had grown up in.
It is not necessary to understand the historical backdrop of this novel, for the story is laid out in such a way that it is simple to understand the events. However, knowing about the era definitely highlighted the foreshadowing and the irony of what happens. In Germany, people joined the Nazi party, thinking it was for the best. Their sons join the Jungvolk, and they displayed the Nazi flags in their windows to show their support. However, this novel is written so wonderfully that you, if you know the history, can feel the terror, the dread, of what will happen tomorrow and what will happen if a character says the wrong thing to the wrong person.
It is not just Louisa and Dorothy that this story follows, for their family is large and there are many people that piqued my interest. One of them, in particular, was Thomas. Thomas, the youngest of the Linford brothers, was the only one of them to fight in the war rather than stay at home and take part in the war effort with his brothers. Fighting the war destroyed Thomas, not only his body but also his spirit. He shows that it is not easy to walk away from something so traumatic, and when he is back home with his family, it is very clear that he was not the same person as he was when he left to go to war. In the rare moments when the old Thomas breaks through, he is light-hearted, humorous, and Louisa latches onto him, which he finds most annoying and amusing at the same time. When I reached the end of the book and found that there was another one, one following his story, I must admit, I became very excited, for Liz Harris writes with such excellence that I have no qualms with purchasing her books to read about these characters.
Love, fear, intrigue and redemption. What a book! What an absolute triumph The Lengthening Shadow is. I fell in love with the setting, the characters, the portrayal of their different circumstances and their reactions to the things they are forced to face. Liz Harris has succeeded in writing a novel that I would read again and again, enjoying it just as much, if not more, each time. This book has dragged me into a world that I would very much like to visit again through the other books in the series.
Liz Harris
Born in London, Liz Harris graduated from university with a Law degree, and then moved to California, where she led a varied life, from waitressing on Sunset Strip to working as secretary to the CEO of a large Japanese trading company.
A few years later, she returned to London and completed a degree in English, after which she taught secondary school pupils, first in Berkshire, and then in Cheshire.
In addition to the nine novels she’s had published, she’s had several short stories in anthologies and magazines.
Liz now lives in Oxfordshire. An active member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association and the Historical Novel Society, her interests are travel, the theatre, cinema, reading and cryptic crosswords.
