BOOK REVIEW – TWO STORM WOOD BY PHILIP GRAY

Book Review Two Storm Wood

Author Philip Gray

Published by Harvil Secker London

‘1919 The Guns Are Silent.

The Dead Are Not.’

Immense. Events move from narrator to narrator, from location to location skillfully although one area was slower. This was when the story was tramping through the mud of a spent battlefield. It was a book that I did not want to leave.

In February 1916 a hospital ward sets the tone of the horror of war and gives us clues as to what we could expect. Outside, our attention is focused on Amy Vanneck and Edward Haslam’s love story. There is focus on England’s class divide and the arrogance that existed. Moving on to 1919 we find Amy and her friend Kitty searching the desolate countryside searching for their missing loved ones. The rain, the mud, abandoned and partly destroyed earth works, shell holes full of water containing whatever, are the world they are searching in. Desperation is obvious.

It is here that we are introduced to the military searching too. Captain Mackenzie leads his men to find the ‘missing believed dead’ to discover their identity if possible, and to bury them. It is a complex story to tell especially when the opening chapter hints at horrors past. A childhood where missionary parents were butchered in China and witnessed by the young . A starting point for a character to emerge and to be a principle one in this tale of horror.

Reminding ourselves this is a work of fiction in the telling but so closely related to historical facts that combine so well it feels that we are there too. Research undertaken is thorough and is welded into the narrative.

Two Storm Wood is a significant place and features strongly. What happens there is a major player and one you will have to read. I am not a plot spoiler. We work our way through the scenarios and eventually we realise the implications of the past that are now in the present. Do Amy and Kitty find their missing men? A chapter turner and page turner to the last one. This has to be the best book I have read for a long time.

David Young, author of Stasi Child, in one sentence says ‘A quite terrifying literary thriller’ and I agree.