War on the Margins by Libby Cone

Before I say anything else about this book, I have to confess something. I owe author Libby Cone a huge, huge apology. She approached me more than six months ago and asked if I was interested in reading and reviewing her novel War on the Margins on my blog. I agreed, received her novel, and read it in early October. Then I put it aside because I wanted to think about the story before I wrote my review and to find a bit more background information on the actual people playing a part in the story. Then life sort of kicked in and the book stayed on my to-be-reviewed pile. And stayed there and stayed there. In an effort to start 2009 with a clean slate when it comes to reviewing books, I picked War on the Margins up again late December for a quick reread to refresh my mind and to finally write my review of the book. My taking so long to get around to posting about War on the Margins has nothing to do with the book not being good or my not liking it. Quite the opposite: I enjoyed the book a lot.

The reason why I agreed to review War on the Margins, is because it deals with a part of modern history that I actually knew very little about: the occupation of the English Channel islands by the Germans during the Second World War. I have to admit, that I wasn’t even really aware that these islands had been occupied by the Germans.

Marlene Zimmer is a young woman with Jewish ancestry living on Jersey, one of the English Channel islands. At the beginning of the German occupation of Jersey, she works as a clerk at the local Aliens Office. When her office gets the task of registering all Jewish people on the island, she decides it’s time to disappear from the face of the earth. Marlene ends up hiding at the home of Lucille and Suzanne who are active in the Resistance movement on the island. Marlene joins them in their actions against the German occupants. When Lucille and Suzanne are captured, Marlene has to fend for herself again. She meets Peter, a Polish
guy who escaped from a forced labor camp on Jersey. As a result of her meeting Peter, Marlene will have to come to grips with the consequences of some of her decisions and judgments from the beginning of the War.

The book is based on a Master’s thesis Libby Cone wrote and some of the characters in the story are historical people. Lucille Schwob (Claude Cahun) and Suzanne Malherbe (Marcel Moore) were a French lesbian artist couple who were active in Jersey’s Resistance movement during World War II. You can read more about them here, here and here, all with links to further information.

One of my favorite aspects of the novel was that two of the main characters were a lesbian couple and that this was not an issue. The story was not about issues of coming out, social ostracism or things like that (though in between the lines you could read that Lucille and Suzanne presented themselves in public as sisters rather than as a couple). Their sexual orientation is just part of who Lucy and Suzanne are and that’s it.

I think that some parts of the book could use a bit more editing, but on the whole the novel is well written in a solid and no-frills style and it kept me interested in the fate of the main characters all through the end. I turned the last page feeling like I was parting with people I had gotten to know well and that I had indeed learned quite a lot about a part of history that I knew very little about, so in that way reading War on the Margins was a mission accomplished.

Due to its similar setting, War on the Margins seems to form a natural companion to The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows, which I haven’t read. If you are interested to read more about the occupation of the Channel Islands by the German army, then I highly recommend picking up War on the Margins as well.

You can read the first chapter of War on the Margin here (scroll down a bit).

This book has also been reviewed here:
Dovegreyreader Scribbles
Rob Around Books (here and here)

Update added Jan 28: I just received an email from Libby, telling me that she has signed with a publisher, which will (re)publish War on the Margins this summer. This means that until then the book will not be available anymore. Libby also told me that she isn’t sure the book will be published under the same title. I will update this post if I can tell more about date and title. Good luck and well done to you, Libby!