Next to Love - Ellen Feldman

I absolutely loved this novel and I think it will be amongst my top reads of the year. It is beautifully written, with some wonderful expressions and images, but never excessive in its descriptions. The characters came to life for me, in particular Babe and Claude, but also smaller characters like Millie’s son Jack, and Charlie’s father King. The author captures the pain of loss and the realities of difficult situations, where a partner is lost forever or comes back from war a changed person. She then explores the joy and pain involved in forming subsequent relationships, whilst the memory of the lost first love lingers heavily.

Set in a small town in America, just prior to, during, and after World War II, the novel is constructed in six parts, referred to here as books, with the first containing some very moving letters between the couples, Babe and Claude, Grace and Charlie, and Millie and Pete, as they are separated due to the men having now gone overseas to fight. As the novel progresses beyond book one, another period of time is covered in each book from the point of view of all three women, though always narrated in the third person. This device gives us the reader an unique perspective on the events as they affect all the main three characters. The three women, Babe, Grace and Millie have been friends since childhood, and they are at the heart of this novel.

This book is about love, finding it and desperately holding on to it, missing out on it, and losing it. Beyond this though, the novel touches on important broader issues of the times in society; racism and sexism, through events in the book, such as Babe working whilst the men were away fighting, and then no longer being required in her role once the men returned, and Babe again fighting the cause for integration. Society at this period in history still left women with a limited role, and in this novel it still feels very much like a man’s world, with women having limited choices and settling for what they have. Through the well drawn characters with damaged minds and bodies who return from war, and the emotional scars and real absences endured by those who were left behind, the novel also very successfully portrays the long-term repercussions left by war. This is great fiction from a talented writer.