SHUTE, Neville - Requiem For a Wren - (Hardcover in Wrapper)

1960 - Book and wrapper good - Previous owner's name inside.    >>>   Re-reading is something I avoid, along with watching movies or TV shows a second time. Life's too short for repeats...well, in most cases. This is such a poignant, human novel that it almost demands re-reading.  Shute's writing is exactly my cup of tea. There's always a cracking story and the life - and death - of Leading Wren Janet Prentice is a heart-breaker. With D-Day and the aftermath of WW2 as a back-drop Shute's in his real comfort zone. If you think the descriptions of the build-up to the Invasion have a powerful realism, you won't be surprised to know that Shute was there at the time as a naval Lt. Commander and that his day job was designing some of the secret and weird new weapons used on June 6th. Yet this is not a war book, certainly not a chronicle of battle. Shute has crafted an emotional story as pertinent today as at any time. Sometimes attitudes which were current in the 40s and 50s jar a bit. ( "..her action drawings were unusually good for a woman" he says of one character). But the tragedy of missed opportunity which engulfs the two main characters is an eternal tale.

* N.B.*  If you buy more books from me you only pay R 6 postage each on the additional books – see what else I have to offer, it might be worth your while.