The War That Saved My Life
Series: The War Series, Book 1
By: Kimberly Brubaker Bradley / Narrated By: Jayne Entwistle
Length: 7 hrs and 38 mins
All I can say is: Wow
Don’t go into The War That Saved My Life thinking it’s just a kids’ book. It’s soooo much more than that—totally engaging for readers far beyond their tender years (indeed, it might be too brutal for the younger, younger kidlets). It depicts adults at their cruelest and most insensitive, even while showing adults at their most caring and sensitive.
And oh yeah—there’s a war going on, and that ain’t all love and kindness.
We don’t know Ada’s age when the story opens, as her mother has never cared enough about her children to tell them (It is later guessed that she’s about 9-10, while Jamie is about 6-years old). WWII is about to start, and there’s an evacuation of London children to the countryside for safety. Ada’s never been outdoors; her life has been spent shut up in one room, even as Jamie is allowed to go to school. Mam tells Ada she’s a monster because of her bad foot (we discover it’s a club foot), and that Ada must NEVER be seen by others—it would look badly on Mam for people to see she’d mothered rubbish, a beast.
But Ada breaks free and joins the transport, and both she and Jamie, unwanted by all the country folk, are left in the care of Susan Smith, a woman with her own grief, her own losses she can barely bear. Plus, she doesn’t have children for a reason—she’s never wanted them and she certainly doesn’t want Ada and Jamie.
But Miss Smith will do the right thing, and even though Ada expects anger and harsh treatment, she receives nothing but kindness and good care.
This is something the traumatized Ada cannot bear. It’s heartbreaking, I tell you! The kinder Susan treats Ada, the more Ada feels she’s not worth it, that rubbish shouldn’t be so happy, that rubbish should never be able to have a brand new dress of her own, that rubbish doesn’t deserve to walk. The scene at Christmas about killed me because Ada is a little girl in so much pain, and while she doesn’t trust a human hand not to hit her, she does find a bit of breathing room when wrapped tightly in a blanket—a hug she can trust won’t hurt her.
Meanwhile, the war is really starting, the evacuees from Dunkirk make an appearance, and the death and filth that surrounds Ada then is something that astonishes her, but it’s a trauma she recognizes. She starts feeling that maybe there are battles all around her, completely within her, and she starts wondering if maybe, just maybe, she might be strong enough to see her way through them. Just don’t make her go into a bomb shelter (it’s so very like the cupboard under the sink her mother would lock her in)—she can almost feel the rats and roaches, smell the dank musty odor, hear her mother laughing even as she screams her pain and fear.
The War That Saved My Life is completely mesmerizing. It is written well, with warmth and tenderness even as Ada crumbles within herself. And Jayne Entwistle’s performance is nothing short of remarkable, catching so many accents, so many shades of so many emotions, bringing Ada and Jamie to life, bringing Susan’s steadiness out, inhabiting the soulless void that is Ada’s mother.
All I can say is: Wow…!
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