trapeze & tightrope

A few years ago I read novelist Simon Mawer's book The Girl Who Fell from the Sky (published in some countries as Trapeze) and absolutely loved it. The novel tells the story of an ordinary young bilingual British/French woman who becomes a clandestine operative inside Nazi-occupied France during World War II.

While the story is fictional, it is grounded in historical fact. Britain's Special Operations Executive (SOE) sent scores of undercover agents into occupied countries during the war to carry out sabotage, to spirit important people back to Britain, and to assist native resistance operations.

While most SOE operatives were men, about fifty were women, many of whom were involved in active combat. About a dozen of those brave women were captured, tortured, and executed by the Nazis.

In 2015, Mawer wrote a follow-up novel to The Girl Who Fell from the Sky, titled Tightrope. I finally had a chance to read a copy, so I first re-read The Girl Who Fell from the Sky and then immediately followed with Tightrope.

Needless to say, I found the second book to be every bit as excellent as the first. The author avoided the trap so many authors fall into when they bring back characters from a previous book yet fail to make them engaging.

Tightrope doesn't have that flaw. The central character is radically changed by of her wartime experiences as she tries to carve a place for herself immediately after the war and, once again, becomes involved in clandestine operations.

She succeeds in many ways but also fails in some important ways, more as a character than in terms of story. She's not always sympathetic but Mawer really peels back all the layers so we can see what makes her tick.

I highly recommend both books and, while I'm at it, also Mawer's earlier novel The Fall about a whole different cast of characters. He has an excellent grasp on creating both detailed, realistic, and contradictory characters and compelling, fresh, and original plots.

The only downside to Mawer is that he's slower than a lot of writers who churn out a book every year. He typically takes about three or four years to finish a new novel, which means we should be due for another one sometime in 2018.