There is something quite unusual about these three novels, for I will write about the trilogy as a whole in this review. For one, although the family is one that is relatively new and even somewhat precariously so to the middle class, their aspirations are stable and sensible. And so the story isn't about that adjustment, because they are simply getting on with it. The parents of the three girls who form the focal point of the narrative are loving and sensible people, so the story isn't about that either. Religious faith also plays a role throughout the book, but done with a light (albeit) firm hand which leaves the door open to believers and unbelievers alike. Religion has played a larger role in the life of the parents than it does for the girls. Hocking has succeeded at something I consider difficult, putting together a narrative about many different characters where the goal, over time, is to see how they develop and how the historical events of their lives affect that development. This last, I think, is one of the hardest things to do with ordinary people - and Hocking implies that the experiences and choices from late childhood to the start of middle age strongly form who a person will become, not that there isn't flexibility for needed change later, but that will not be possible not for everyone. Most extraordinary of all, however, Hocking resists the impulse to 'make things right'. Friends are lost forever or make very bad choices, beloved people die, there are consequences that cannot be shifted. A person who has never experienced security will find a way to cope, to ride on the surface of life, but may not have the stamina for trouble focussed on them; a person who has been abused as a child may lack the fundamentals for forming good judgement about... well.... anything. The three Fairley girls have the characters that they are born with but the strong secure childhood gives them an added strength to cope with whatever comes along, despite various weaknesses in their characters. The middle child Alice, who is by implication, the prime focus of the story, the observer, takes longer to find her way and her balance. There are some recurring motifs (mentioned in the last book - and I was thrilled to see that I was correct about one of them - mentioned again at the close of the book). No bells and whistles here, solid, insightful, with flights of gorgeous writing. **** ( )

Welcome Strangers is the third book in Mary Hocking’s Fairley family trilogy. The lovely thing with a series of course – especially when you read them close together is that the reader already knows the characters and is invested in what happens to them. Therefore picking up this book was like slipping easily into an interrupted conversation.

“Then she realised that girls in an office in the adjacent wing of the building were looking at her. A trickle of despair ran down her spine. Would she ever be able to adapt herself to this curious world with its mysterious concerns? She had been demobilised from the Women’s Royal Naval Service only a few months ago, and already the war years seemed like a period out of time. Life flowed around them, leaving them isolated, a strange territory unconnected with the mainland. She didn’t like the mainland very much, and she didn’t understand what was happening on it.”

As the novel opens, it is 1946, the long war is over. Post war London is an often cheerless place. Alice Fairley has replaced the excitement and importance of Egypt for a job in a local government education office. Louise and Guy are still finding Guy’s return home after years abroad difficult to get used to, their children James and Catherine too used to being without him. Judith Fairley is now re-married and living in Sussex, this is another big change for her daughters, both Alice and newlywed Claire finding it particularly hard. The Fairley’s old next door neighbour Jacov Vaseylin is working in the theatre, living in the flat of a friend who has gone to America, still haunted by the disappearance of his sister in the 1930’s, Jacov continues to assist Louise in betraying her husband. With Daphne Drummond now also married and moved to Norfolk, her brother Angus is still behaving with peculiar secrecy. As Alice is drawn more towards her third cousin Ben – still deeply affected by his experiences in a Japanese prisoner of war camp – Angus’s secret life threatens to involve everyone in things they never dreamed they would be a part of.

By now, in this final novel of the trilogy, some of these characters have revealed facets of their personality – which at best are flawed, and make them hard to sympathise with. Mary Hocking has created characters that the reader becomes involved with, however, whether they are likeable or not. In these characters, Mary Hocking highlights beautifully how living in difficult and turbulent times, can lead people to making strange and life changing decisions.

Set against a background of the introduction of a new education bill, the wedding of the Princess Elizabeth, the coming of the Olympics, and the talk of spies on many lips – Welcome Strangers is a wonderfully atmospheric and compelling read, and rounds off this lovely series brilliantly. Mary Hocking’s sense of time and place is spot on; I particularly liked the spy element to the story – which I had suspected might happen from hints in the previous novel –indifferent heroes. I think I will rather miss these characters, but look forward to reading more by Mary Hocking in the future. ( )

Welcome Strangers by Mary Hocking

WW II is over and the troops are coming home. Lots of good stuff here, right? Wrong! While I agree that Ms. Hocking needed to wrap up all of the bits from the first two books of her Good Daughters WWII trilogy I cannot say that I loved how she did it. Many of the background characters came to the forefront of the storyline for their bits while the main characters sat on the back burner for quite some time. Becoming so involved in the Fairley family throughout the first two books, along with those most important in their lives, I wanted to remain with them. Technically I suppose we did but it was in a rather round-about manner.
The three sisters & their mother did remain true to the personalities they had displayed in the first two books which was a relief. But the book meandered too much for my taste. I am glad I read it for I would have been rather unhappy not to have learned what became of Louise, Alice & Claire. Still and all it was too little of them for my taste and I found it difficult to remain focused on this book whereas the first two sucked me in and held me tight. So while I very highly recommend the first two of the trilogy: Good Daughters & Indifferent Heroes I cannot do so for this one. ( )