Waiting for the Violins by Justine Saracen

Waiting for the Violins
by Justine Saracen
Pages: 284
Date: March 16 2014
Publisher: Bold Strokes Books
Series: None

Review
Rating: 4.5 out of 5.0
Read: June 14 to 16 2016

This is my first book by Justine Saracen.

My first historical fiction in . . . um, six days. Heh. Figured it’d be longer. Then I saw that graphic novel set in Germany, and Shaken to the Core, then Trigger Mortis all the way back from the end of April. So this is actually my third Historical fiction novel this month. 13th this year. Let me see. My third war novel of the year. 8th book that involved military or ex-military. Third spy book of the year.

Right, got distracted there. Long ago I used to devour books like this – spy books in general, war books, military books, and specifically spy books set during WWII (roughly 77 set during WWII, not all of which were spy books (26 spy books set during WWII); roughly 49 historical fiction spy books). Somewhere along the way I kind of moved past these specific types of books, to a certain extent, but it’s still of interest.

This is the first book I’ve read set in Belgium during WWII; at least I believe it is, though I know I’ve read war books set in Belgium before. Or, at least, in land that would become Belgium, since Waterloo occurred on land that was, at the time, part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands.

This book is a lot more a historical fiction spy thriller set during World War II than it is a lesbian book. As the afterward noted, ‘The story of the French and Belgian Resistance during World War II is inspiring and tragic, and the sexual preferences of its heroes would have been irrelevant.’ That’s not to say that this is a book that overlooks sexual preferences, but that it does not tremendously matter what someone’s preferences were. Like how Sandrine Toussaint, regardless of her likes/dislikes/wants/desires, was forced to ‘lay with’ a man for the benefits that doing so would help keep up spy operations; and how Antonia Forrester ‘lay with’ a woman on the last night of training because . . . I believe the reason given was ‘for comfort’ or something like that. Dora, the woman Antonia slept with, certainly wasn’t a lesbian – even if she initiated the contact; she just wanted ‘comfort’. It’s actually unclear if anyone in this book is a lesbian, or, for that matter, heterosexual. From the hints dropped, Sandrine might be bisexual (not because she slept with a German; but because of some of the comments regarding her husband); Dora would have been whatever term is used for someone who will sleep with anyone breathing; and Antonia . . . just might be a lesbian. Potentially. At least she turned down advances from men, but not from women.

Right. So. As the book description notes, Antonia Forrester was a nurse at Dunkirk during the evacuation. She’s injured but survived, unlike all of the other nurses, I believe, she was with. After a period of recovery from massive injuries, Antonia joins the OSS and is trained. She’s shipped off to Brussels, since she had spent some time there as a kid. She’s to contact the resistance there, and try to help as best she can. Unexpectedly, to me, she wasn’t actually going alone nor the leader of her 2 person force – she is, though, the only one to make it to Brussels.

Because of circumstances beyond her control, Antonia is cut off from command, and from her ‘target’ resistance fighters, though she is able to hook up with some Jewish fighters (and, eventually, with the group she was originally supposed to hook up with).

Sandrine Toussaint is a high class woman living in a chateau near Brussels. After faking out the Germans when they came to inspect the place as a possible headquarters, thereby keeping it in her own hands, Sandrine worked on delivering people (downed pilots, Jewish people, etc.) out of occupied lands. The leader of her line was captured shortly before Antonia arrived, and so she suggested that if anyone came by asking about that individual, they would likely be Gestapo, and so should be ignored/diverted (which is how Antonia ended up being unable to hook up with the 'correct' resistance group for months).

Time flies quickly in this book. One moment it’s June 1940, the next it’s some time in 1941. There are some rather riveting scenes, though there is a certain distancing that comes from passing through so much time in a short work. None-the-less, this was an enjoyable book, and a nice return to a genre I used to devour.

June 16 2016