Requiem for a Wren

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The slower parts of this story might have worked better for me if this audiobook had a different narrator. I must admit that I found myself laughing at the narrator at times, particularly his heavy upper crust English accent which was so inappropriate for this particular book. His reading was also very monotone with little to no inflection of his voice. Nevil Shute was extremely popular in the 1940s and 50s. He wrote in a straightforward, highly readable style on subjects that he knew about. Thus it is not surprising that there are quite a few technical references in this book, especially to equipment used in the Normandy landings of 1944 (Shute, an officer in the RNVR, was actually present at D-Day) but these are easily comprehensible to the ordinary listener. The atmosphere and tension of those weeks before the invasion is very well caught. Disabled fighter pilot, Alan Duncan, must confront his own ghosts and fears. His brother, a marine sergeant, has died in Normandy and he wishes to learn the true details. The brother's girl, a wren officer, is lost to him without a trace, and he must find her for his brother's sake. His fear of flying and the fear of facing life challenges in his new disability are personal hurdles that he must overcome. A day or so later I was in Plymouth and walked into a used bookshop near Sutton Harbour. First book I spotted was Requiem for a Wren! I was fated to buy the book.

All of this plays into Shute's story and is worked beautifully into a story of love, war, regret and family. While the author pulls no punches, he does not dramatize, he tells it like it was, laying bare the hearts of the characters. Even knowing of the eventual end of the pivotal character does not take away from the dramatic tension Shute creates throughout the story. He brings us to slow realizations in a wonderfully artistic manner, dawn breaking finally revealing the true depth of each character. Janet was haunted by a decision she made in the course of her war duties. After that one mistake, she loses all her cherished people, one by one, as the war takes them, which she comes to feel is justice for her unforgivable act. As a character she is heartbreaking; as a symbol she embodies the impossible burdens of war. Meanwhile, Alan, who needs his own healing, has become obsessed with his quest to find her. The cruellest accident of all is Alan's arrival at the house in Australia, too late to meet her in person. As we read, the pressure of this timing grows to tragic proportions; if he had come home just a few months earlier, would that have saved Janet in some way? Could she have forgiven herself? Would it have saved him? urn:lcp:requiemforwren0000unse:epub:a30ef13e-9c23-498b-9987-af104de9ed55 Foldoutcount 0 Identifier requiemforwren0000unse Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t9g54g300 Invoice 1652 Isbn 0900948086 Lccn 70552632 Ocr tesseract 4.1.1 Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 0.9810 Ocr_module_version 0.0.7 Ocr_parameters -l eng Old_pallet IA400068 Openlibrary_edition The mysterious death of a young woman on an Australian farm reveals a heartrending story of doomed wartime romanceIt's still great. I'd forgotten about the Irish Terrier, Dev. I used to have Irish Terriers and I loved both dearly, Bridget, then Colleen. Naturally, it made the story all the better. As I said this was my second Nevil Shute book and what amazed me again is that in both the books, his women characters are super strong and totally amazing. You've got to read this book to know what she does in Army and how. Imagine a broad shouldered girl with a square face who claims she isn't much of a beauty but what she does with Guns is something everybody watches with their eyes popping out. One unfortunate mistake in the course of the war for which she is never blamed by anyone changes her life for good. Where that episode leads her and how it all ruins her life to no repair is the story is all about. Heart-breaking yet a emotional roller coaster ride of the three amazing characters and their friends and family is totally out of this world experience. Nevil Shute's stories are totally smooth and his narrative is just so gripping yet simple that I found the book to be totally unputdownable as my heart kept asking me to go forward and solve the riddle. Plus I wanted to race to the end to know how it all ends. As I said it was one of the most emotional stories that I ever read, it is very tough to point out the moments it made me super emotional. The entire journey of one brother to find his dead brother's lover touched me deep inside, every-time his search fails, my heart cried out. Also the girls struggle after her loss and after so many deaths, the point where she finally loses something which makes her cry for the first time was the moment my tears just rolled out, unable to control the barrage. Wow, that was just wow moment and I feel totally out of words to explain why and what I felt at that moment. If you read the book, you will certainly know and agree with me on that. Requiem for a Wren is a departure for Shute from his usual "formula." It is a heart breaker. Close to the beginning of Requiem for a Wren the hero of the story commits suicide. Once she is found dead it is discovered that she had been living under an alias and there are no papers with which to identity her. The purpose of the rest of the book is to discover the identity of this woman and to allow the reader to get to know her and her motivations for killing herself. The more I read the more I liked this woman (Janet) and the sadder became her story.

While the story is more or less revolved around the narrator/protagonist, a good part of it is spent on the story of the wren officer, Janet Prentice. With slow accuracy, Alan brings to life Janet, and her story wins the reader's sympathy. Her life is weighed by grief and guilt, and the resulting PTSD completely unmans her. Life afterward is nothing but just a struggle for survival, which battle she loses at the end. Oddly enough, one of Shute’s biggest failings is one of the things I love about his work. As I have noted previously, and as Kim notes in her review of On the Beach, Shute’s writing cannot be called elegant. In Kim’s words: To be honest, I'm not sure your original assessment is wrong. There is all that, and it's more evident in some novels than others. When I think about it, it could be that Shute's novels are soap operas for an industrial society, rather than a financial one, which automatically gives them the appearance of rather more substance. An Old Captivity is definitely interesting; it contains the usual simplistic relationship stuff, but large parts of it consist of practical arrangements for a trip to a sub-arctic island, the detail of which is almost anti-fiction. Then you have a book like Ruined City which is a sort of capitalist fairytale and which reflects his extreme right-wing views. At some point I decided that with Shute it was best to take him book by book, if I was at all inclined to do so, and I'm not really - I've been through about half his output and the remainder are marked to read, at some point, someday. Ocr_converted abbyy-to-hocr 1.1.20 Ocr_module_version 0.0.17 Openlibrary OL9722439M Openlibrary_editionSetting aside my few complaints, I enjoyed the story immensely. The characters were so well drawn I felt like I knew each one of them. As I got to know Janet I kept hoping that she, who committed suicide at the beginning, would somehow be found alive.... perhaps the dead body was mis-identified ....and the ending would be a happy one, as I've come to expect from Shute.