The Children’s War
The Children’s War
A moving and powerful coming-of-age novel set in war-torn Europe, this is fiction at its most gripping. Now available as a Moth Books paperback, ebook and audio book, updated with a new ending.
A young girl sits alone in a station waiting room in Marseilles. Part Jewish, Ilse has been sent out of Nazi Germany to safety in Morocco by her mother. But her journey takes her back to France, where she cannot escape the Nazi occupation. Blown about by circumstances beyond her control, she must grow up alone in a demi-monde of refugees, whores and freedom fighters.
In Germany, Nicolai struggles against his destiny in the Hitler Youth. Nicolai is a reluctant warrior. His only comfort is the friendship of Ilse’s mother, who works as a nanny in his affluent household
The war eats up their youth. Though hope grows in France, a dark tableau is unfolding in Germany, and this reluctant soldier and brave young girl must fight to survive. This epic novel of occupation and war powerfully evokes the battles behind enemy lines, those of home and of heart.
Reviews
‘Breathlessly suspenseful… Charlesworth uses two apparent opposites - a timid, sensitive Nazi boy, a bold, red-headed Jewish girl - as a way of exploring what good people have in common and how innocents learn to be decent in a world swarming with evil. She moves her story through fast, terrifying intricacies of plot: journeys, battles, smuggled papers, love affairs, carefully calculated loyalties, heroic sacrifices and endless duplicity… Charlesworth’s greatest success is to show how these children grow into morally mature adults, learning about treachery not just by seeing it around them, but by making difficult and sometimes terrible choices themselves… Engrossing.’
— Polly Shulman, New York Times Book Review
‘Ilse’s ambivalence towards her father, a hero in the eyes of the world but a man riddled with human imperfection, is particularly moving … Ilse grows from a passive child, observing events, into an active participant, driven by the same mixed motives as everyone else. With Ilse as unblinking guide, Charlesworth travels the morally ambiguous alleyways of war to create a deeply satisfying read full of richly complicated characters.’
— Kirkus Reviews (starred)
‘The Children's War is a haunting and lyrical novel of childhood stripped bare in the face of barbarous circumstance.’
— The Age, Melbourne
‘In this astonishing novel, we enter two worlds simultaneously: Nazi Germany as ordinary Germans experienced it and Vichy France with its virulent anti-Semitism, both lived from the point of view of adolescents for whom the world is to be experienced rather than questioned. Brilliantly researched, eloquently articulated, Charlesworth’s novel is a corrective to the ease with which we identify the enemy and a moving threnody to the victims of war.’
— Rosemary Sullivan, author of Stalin’s Daughter
‘Charlesworth presents us with an unusual and compelling perspective. She has a keen eye for detail and wide sympathies. She tells it as it really was. . Her young people are confronted with an awful challenge : can you be true to yourself in a world of violence, monstrous lies and unimaginable horror? Is this possible when they are living, as Nicolai’s father tells him, “in the time of dishonour” … Total war is a juggernaut. This is the story of those crushed beneath its careless wheels and those who somehow survive. Charlesworth never shrinks from the horror, for this is a time of victims …Sometimes you get the feeling that a certain novel is one that its author has been preparing for years to write. This is such a one, and it is really very good indeed.
— Allan Massie, The Scotsman
‘In this absorbing story of children who have to grow up too fast and parents who are less than perfect, Monique Charlesworth explores, with sensitivity and insight, the poignant drama of youth in a time of war. Vividly detailed, historically informed and emotionally restrained, The Children’s War breathes a well-earned authenticity, even as it recounts circumstances that test human character to belief-defying limits.’
— Eva Hoffman, author of Lost in Translation
‘the image of the lonely, vulnerable child seeking refuge among strangers is one of the most enduring and haunting of the Second World War … It is one of the strengths of this novel that children are seen not only as victims of warring states, but of the emotional entanglements of their parents … in the intensely moving story of Ilse’s emotional awakening.’
— The Telegraph
‘This powerful novel about two German teenagers robbed of their youth by the Second World War was partly inspired by the author's family history, and certainly the train of events that links Ilse and Nicolai seems too bizarre and terrible to have been invented …The tension is unbearable as Ilse counts the lucky mother-of-pearl buttons on the cardigan that Lore knitted to send her off to Morocco, and we can only hope that they will do the trick.’
— The Times Educational Supplement
‘However urgently parents try to protect their children, in wartime the very notion of safe haven is an illusion. With the luxury of historical perspective, we readers know this, but were we Ilse’s parents, or Nicolai’s, what path would we have chosen? More to the point of Charlesworth’s drama, what would we have done had we been children, cast as Ilse or Nicolai? . . . With her cinematic eye for description and her story’s propulsive narrative rhythm, Charlesworth thrusts us into the very heart of chaos . . . In her evocative story of adolescents groping, without guide or compass, through the labyrinth of war, Charlesworth tells us hauntingly, what happened to these children and how they struggled to survive.
— Diane Cole, Baltimore Sun
‘Among other things, this novel explores the possibilities for choice in extreme circumstances. Charlesworth knows that writers should show, rather than tell. The result is a compelling, sometimes harrowing, and moving novel that deserves a wide readership, including teenagers and students of history.’
— Sydney Morning Herald
‘Sparely told, this poignant, pacy novel about two people searching for love at a time of upheaval is threaded with elements of the author’s own family history.’
— The Mail on Sunday
‘Half-Jewish and wholly innocent 13-year-old Ilse gains experience fast. As [The Children’s War] moves relentlessly forward—the Germans move into France, the Jews disappear, friends become collaborators, suspicious characters turn into saviors—Ilse must make sense of the events of the war while trying to make sense of adolescence. Discovering one’s identity and then hiding it, denying it and reinventing it, are accomplished at an urgent pace. Ilse’s story, rich in local color and character detail, is powerful and poignant.”
— Barbara Fisher, Boston Globe
‘[An] impeccably researched novel . . . We follow [Ilse’s] progress in German-occupied Paris, Marseilles and Cannes with horrified fascination as the author meticulously recreates a world of fear, subterfuge, massive societal hypocrisy, and the nitty-gritty of life on the perpetual run. On one level, The Children’s War is a clear and lucid exploration of the nature of survival. At the same time, it’s a clever and subtle tale that draws its strength from the anomalous and ambiguous points of view and situations of its two engaging protagonists, and of the flawed adults who orbit around them . . . Charlesworth describes [the war] with singular power and imaginative reach. The unreliability of adults and the difficulty of knowing what the right course of action might be give this book a sense of nuanced authenticity . . . This suspenseful and beautifully written work about the Second World War will inevitably give rise to reflections not only about the story it ostensibly recounts, but also about today’s children of war.’
— Elaine Kalman Naves, Globe and Mail
‘Charlesworth beautifully shows how the small weaknesses of good people are magnified when the stakes are high, creating flawed but deeply sympathetic characters. This is an alternately haunting and tender portrait of the lives of innocents caught in the relentless, random path of war.’
— Publisher’s Weekly USA (starred)
‘Monique Charlesworth writes with great power and effectiveness, and has created a story that absolutely cries out to be made into a feature film. The Children’s War will stay in my mind for a long time.’
— Middlesburgh Review
‘For Americans, World War II was the war of soldiers, recently celebrated as ‘the greatest generation.’ For Europeans it was equally a war for civilians and, inevitably, children. In The Children’s War, Monique Charlesworth tells that story so artfully that she brings an entirely fresh perspective to bear on familiar psychological territory … In this richly satisfying and utterly absorbing novel, Charlesworth achieves instant credibility with her command of detail and vivid evocations of place—Marseilles, Paris, Meknès in Morocco and wartime Hamburg . . . The author enters the consciousness of the children with insight and restraint . . . The characters and personalities the author builds for these two children are fascinating and original, as are those of the adults who surround them. By the end of the book, Ilse and Nicolai have become so real that, assuming they survived, one is tempted to imagine them today among those Europeans in their late seventies who, as children, learned lessons about humanity that our children only glimpsed on Sept. 11, 2001.’
— Robert MacNeil, Washington Post Book World
‘Children never write the histories of war, and yet it is their lives—so malleable, so vulnerable—that are often most changed by it. By shifting her gaze to a child’s eye view, Monique Charlesworth has given us a completely original retelling of some of the familiar stories of World War II. A literary page turner, vivid, engaging and suspenseful.’
— Geraldine Brooks, author of Year of Wonders
‘Well drawn, intensely compelling, and admirably crafted.’
— Pam Johnson, School Library Journal
‘Gutsy … Charlesworth’s novel holds its own in [a] distinguished crowd [of literature on World War II], in part because the characters are drawn with such precision …Haunting … Without describing a single battle, it captures the essence of the war and the wrecked lives of so many who survive it . . . Beautiful and heartbreaking.’
— Jennifer Autrey, Fort Worth Star-Telegram
‘Tender, shocking and beautifully written, The Children’s War marks Monique Charlesworth as a major talent.’
— Image Magazine
‘Perhaps the most wrenching tragedy lies with those who scarcely know what to do with themselves as the war winds down … But beaten peoples climb back to their feet and the world of men and nations shudders on forward. Though the last chapter almost seems to sputter out, there is a final ray of light (and sadness) that brings the novel to a perfect close. This is not a story about a greatest generation -- it is a lament for generations lost to imperial ambition. A five-star read from start to finish.’
— Boston Edge
‘In The Children’s War, Charlesworth explores the lives of ordinary people and young children caught in a war they may or may not have believed in—a war from which they were powerless to escape for it followed and found them no matter where they tried to hide . . . [The book is told] from the point of view of children—Ilse and Nicolai—whose parents are less than perfect and who must find their own answers in this suddenly altered and dangerous world. This perspective gives a freshness to [the] novel . . . Primary sources [and] Charlesworth’s background as a journalist and a scriptwriter [lend] an immediacy to the sounds and smells and scenes of wartime Hamburg and Marseilles.’
— Geeta Sharma-Jensen, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
‘Charlesworth’s prose masterfully sustains a tension between the sense of impending doom and the main characters’ dreamy and often childlike perceptions. The novel powerfully conveys both the horror and the banality of war through adolescent eyes. Highly recommended.’
— Reba Leiding, Library Journal
‘Gripping … We see Ilse’s short-lived happiness in Morocco dissolve into the nightmare of her experiences with her father in war-torn Paris and Marseille. Nicolai, made mostly safe by his family’s money and political affiliation, finds himself increasingly uncomfortable with his own position of privilege. The overarching theme of this novel is salvation in its many forms and from myriad sources, chased by those who seek it and those who seek to provide it. The characters are complex and engaging and make this novel stand out from other similar stories.’
— Debi Lewis, Booklist
‘The Children’s War is that rare fiction that has the feel of actual life. Once I became engaged by the child Ilse’s perilous journey through the Nazi occupation, I was compelled to escort her to safety. This is a beautifully composed book of past terror that calls to us during our present international peril.’
— Laura Shaine Cunningham, author of Sleeping Arrangements and Dreams of Rescue