Simon Mawer

The Girl who Fell from the Sky

Marian Sutro is an outsider: the daughter of a diplomat, brought up on the shores of Lake Geneva and in England, half French, half British, naive yet too clever for her own good. But when she is recruited from her desk job by SOE to go undercover in wartime France, it seems her hybrid status - and fluent French - will be of service to a greater, more dangerous cause. Trained in sabotage, dead-drops, how to perform under interrogation and how to kill, Marian parachutes into south-west France, her official mission to act as a Resistance courier. But her real destination is Paris, where she must seek out family friend Clément Pelletier, once the focus of her adolescent desires. A nuclear physicist engaged in the race for a new and terrifying weapon, he is of urgent significance to her superiors. As she struggles through the strange, lethal landscape of the Occupation towards this reunion, what completes her training is the understanding that war changes everything, and neither love nor fatherland may be trusted. The Girl Who Fell from the Sky is both a gripping adventure story and a moving meditation on patriotism, betrayal and the limits of love.

Sian Wadey

I was lent this book by a friend from the theatre, after cheekily eavesdropping in on their conversation and popping up at a convenient time. 
Initially, I wasn't sure. I don't really read books about the war, Birdsong being one exception, but this sounded different. It was clear from the start this wasn't about the front line, this was about a woman doing her best in war torn France. 
I really enjoyed reading about the processes that Marian Sutro went through in order to go undercover. I thought it went get confusing trying to remember what her name was at different points throughout the novel but I managed to keep track quite easily. Marian herself was a likeable character, easy to sympathise with, but still a woman with some gumption, definitely ahead of her time. 
The novel really gets going when she is dropped into France. I can't imagine what it would have felt like, to be dropped into the dark, knowing you could be dead before your feet touched the ground, but Simon Mawer describes it with incredible detail and realism. 
As we follow Marian through France and her dangerous journey, we grow to love her, care for her and wonder what is going to be her fate. I don't want to give anything away, but as things go from bad to worse I was absolutely gripped. As I held the book in my hands, my knuckles were white. 
As the book came to an end I was absolutely furious! It seemed like someone had ripped the last few pages out, leaving the reader teetering. I cannot wait to read more of Simon Mawer and hope there is a follow up to this. I recommend this book highly, it is much more than a novel about the Second World War, it is about relationships, love and above all, hope.

The Girl who Fell from the Sky

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