A Small Dark Quiet – Miranda Gold

With just a matter of weeks before London is thronged with crowds as the war is finally at an end and Germany has been defeated. It is March 1945. But the price of victory will always come at a cost as people not just in London but all over Europe will begin the long and painful journey of rebuilding their shattered lives.

Millions of lives have been lost and children without parents and children whose parents have been killed by the Nazi’s in Concentration Camps. In London. A Small Dark Quiet by Miranda Gold follows Sylvie as she fights her battle, she has given birth to twins but one of the twins is stillborn. Sylvie and her husband Gerald are distraught at their loss.

Two years later as they rebuild they have adopted a boy who was born into the horrors of the Concentration Camps. They have given him a new name of Arthur after the child they lost. For Arthur all his past seems to now have been lost and this in the years to come will be struggle as Arthur attempts to discover his Jewish history and all that that entails. He is trapped in a life and scared to seek his own past for what this will bring.

There is rage from Gerald who has been fighting his own battle since the end of the war and seems to take it out on Arthur and this will have a deep and last effect on the boy. What we also witness is the gradual collapse of Sylvie as the weight of grief is all consuming. Arthur’s shadow is his ghost of his past that is reluctant to leave it is later in life when he finally breaks the shackles of the torment by Gerald and seeks his way in life. Nothing is going well for him though and even in a relationship with Lydia that goes wrong after he is used by her. At times this is a dark novel to read with disturbing and fractured lives broken by war and torment.

Miranda has written a very powerful novel that explores many themes including replacing one son with another and attempting to hide the pain and suffering of death but over time creates more personal devastation on a boy who has witness’s horror on scale unimaginable. With a painful ending to the story it is still one book I would recommend.

336 Pages.

Thank you to Unbound for the review copy of A Small Dark Quiet by Miranda Gold

A Small Dark Quiet by Miranda Gold was published by Unbound and was published on 4^th December 2018 and is available through Waterstones, Amazon and through your local independent bookshop.