4 generations episodes portraying impacts of WW1, ageing, dementia, death, marriage, grief of mother for son. Well written and sensitive but one looked for more of a point to the story. One felt slightly unravelled oneself by all the issues.

‘Home fires’ is a novel that gives a sensitive account of a mixture of emotions and feeling: the sorrow of war, feelings of inadequacy and not living up to expectations, consequences of ageing and coming to terms with death. Elizabeth Day explores these themes through the accounts and experiences of four generations, spanning the First World War to modern peacekeeping in Africa. Interwoven in the narrative are the difficulties of becoming accepted in your husband’s family; and keeping love and feelings alive through a lengthy marriage. Added to this, the terrible psychological effects of war and the grief of loss across the century are deftly and delicately revealed in an absorbing tale, brought to life through realistic characters.

Judith is a young girl when her father returns from the war, a man much changed, prone to fits of anger and despair. A father Judith no longer knows and a father of whom she is scared.

We again meet Judith years later as an old woman whose mind is being taken over by Alzheimer, and we travel with her as she sees things through a different and corrosive lens of this disease.

Andrew and Caroline have only had one son, a son who is declared dead after his first posting in the army.

All these events connect in this intense but gently told story. The effects of shell shock on our veterans throughout the years and all the wars. One of the most poignant and powerful rendering of a mother's grief at the loss of her son. A travel through the mind of Alzheimers and a frightening look at the confusion and forgetfulness of the sufferer. An intense look at the effects of war on all involved. Yet life must go on for the living and these characters must find a way to do just that.

ARC from NetGalley. ( )