A review by thelizmaguire
White Feathers by Susan Lanigan
4.0
White Feathers is the debut novel from Irish author Susan Lanigan. Divided into five sections detailing the years with young Eva Downey and the role World War I in her life, White Feathers is a historical romance with guts . After receiving a generous endowment to attend a finishing school, Lanigan’s fictionalized “The Links”, Eva leaves her family home in London. Eva and her step-mother Catherine, her father’s second wife, share a tense relationship since the family’s immigration from Ireland nearly ten years before. While at school Eva explores and expands her understanding of life through the tutelage of her English teacher, Mr. Shandlin. When her elder sister Imelda takes ill, Eva leaves Links behind— until Sybil, her friend from the school, tells Mr. Shandlin where he might find the brilliant and beautiful Eva. When the war and family obligations interrupt their courtship Eva is forced to do the worst imaginable…and so begins White Feathers.
I was first approached by the author, Susan Lanigan, in January of this year (2015) to read and review the novel. I set about reading White Feathers as spring opened the skies in Dublin. In the window seat of my favorite cafe, perched above D’Olier Street with the novel open on my lap, rain lashed the glass beside me while I read and read and read. White Feathers was so intense and addictive that my tea went cold and unnoticed—perhaps the greatest sign of enthralling literature. I found White Feathers well written and well paced. The plot could have become stale in the length of the novel (my copy is close to 450 pages) but Lanigan’s division into five sections is wise. It allows her to jump timeline and bring plots forward without entire scenes of exposition. Dotted within the text are letters from one character to another which adds an element of the beyond to the story, allowing Lanigan to move the plot swiftly and have her characters do most of the talking.
I always admire an author who can stock their story in such history without it becoming a textbook and I think Lanigan succeeds. By laying the historical foundations thickly in the first two sections of the story, there is room to move within the universe created in the last three. Lanigan trusts her characters implicitly. The story is carried by the confident, human voices behind the typeset. I am often amazed by how the human brain can configure only so many letters, arranged into so many words, into images and sometimes even living breathing flesh in their minds. Lanigan is a natural story teller and that’s evident in this popular debut.
Without further adieu I recommend this book whole heartedly for anyone interested in World War I fiction, romance or coming of age stories set in Europe. You can find the novel in your local Waterstones, or online here. You can learn more about Susan Lanigan by visiting her website or join the conversation about White Feathers on Twitter!
I was first approached by the author, Susan Lanigan, in January of this year (2015) to read and review the novel. I set about reading White Feathers as spring opened the skies in Dublin. In the window seat of my favorite cafe, perched above D’Olier Street with the novel open on my lap, rain lashed the glass beside me while I read and read and read. White Feathers was so intense and addictive that my tea went cold and unnoticed—perhaps the greatest sign of enthralling literature. I found White Feathers well written and well paced. The plot could have become stale in the length of the novel (my copy is close to 450 pages) but Lanigan’s division into five sections is wise. It allows her to jump timeline and bring plots forward without entire scenes of exposition. Dotted within the text are letters from one character to another which adds an element of the beyond to the story, allowing Lanigan to move the plot swiftly and have her characters do most of the talking.
I always admire an author who can stock their story in such history without it becoming a textbook and I think Lanigan succeeds. By laying the historical foundations thickly in the first two sections of the story, there is room to move within the universe created in the last three. Lanigan trusts her characters implicitly. The story is carried by the confident, human voices behind the typeset. I am often amazed by how the human brain can configure only so many letters, arranged into so many words, into images and sometimes even living breathing flesh in their minds. Lanigan is a natural story teller and that’s evident in this popular debut.
Without further adieu I recommend this book whole heartedly for anyone interested in World War I fiction, romance or coming of age stories set in Europe. You can find the novel in your local Waterstones, or online here. You can learn more about Susan Lanigan by visiting her website or join the conversation about White Feathers on Twitter!