Book Review: Carrie’s War, by Nina Bawden.
Protagonists Carrie and Albert bring a maturity of conversation and arguments as each try to make sense of their lives as evacuees in a Welsh village in World War Two. “Talk of opposites! Mr Head and Miss Heart,” as Hepzibah called them, ‘stubborn as mules when their minds were fixed.’ And their disagreements and conflicting views also attracted them to each other although in Nina Bawden’s 1973 novel Carrie’s War the flame of romance doesn’t quite take light since they are just nine and fourteen.
It’s through their conversations that we get a child’s eye view of life in the village as Carrie looks after her younger brother Nick and Albert pursues his education despite the limitations of the village school and local library. There’s very little of the war or their absent parents so the story centres on the three children’s relationships with the adults. Carrie’s complex relationship with the unlikable Mr Evans and his doormat of a sister Aunt Lou who have taken in Carrie and Nick, while Albert stays with the more interesting mother earth figure of Hepzibah and autistic Mister Johnny. Hepzibah also cares for Mr Evan’s sister Mrs Gotobed – a sad Miss Haversham figure surrounded in her room by the 29 ball gowns and jewellery of her former glamour days.
Albert looks to the darker side of humanity thinking Mr Evans has hidden his sister’s will after her death while Carrie tries to see the good in the old miser. It’s the conversations that help to define their characters – Carrie continually having a conscience about every action ingrained into her by her adherence to religion while studious Albert is more logical and less effected by emotions but about doing the right thing. A clever and subtle coming of age story of wartime evacuees whose have life changing experiences away from their parents and come to see the world differently from the one they left behind.
Harry Mottram
The novel has been made into a TV series in the 1970s and has been a set book for GCSE in the past.