Books like Little Boy Lost

This is the first of the writers I’ve followed up after reading about them in “The Book of Forgotten Authors”, which I read in October. Prior to that I’d not heard of Marghanita Laski. I had heard of her uncle, Harold Laski, who was prominent in the Labour Party in the 1930s and 1940s.In the chaos of France in 1940, British officer Hilary Wainwright gets separated from his French wife and baby son. Back in Britain Wainwright has a job in Intelligence, and in 1942 he hears from a contact in the French Resistance that his wife has been arrested and shot by the Gestapo. His son has disappeared. Three years later the same contact tells him of a boy in an orphanage in a small town 50 miles from Paris. Circumstantial evidence suggests the boy may be Wainwright’s lost son. Wainwright visits the orphanage to meet the boy, but how can he be sure?This is a short novel and in some ways it’s a simple tale, but I was impressed with Laski’s creation of the character of Wainwright. At times he isn’t the most attractive of personalities. Largely it’s because he is damaged goods. The loss of his wife and son has left him defensive and unwilling to get close to anyone new. He’s the sort of character whose faults make him more believable. Another strong point of the novel is the way the author creates the atmosphere of France in 1945. Laski lived in Paris for a year in 1937-38 and there’s clearly something of her in Wainwright, who considers pre-war France “the most civilised country on earth”. By contrast, France in 1945 is a place of ruined buildings and desperate poverty, with a poisonous atmosphere created from the bitterness of the Occupation, and the degree to which each person collaborated. The economy is dominated by the Black Market.Wainwright’s meetings with the boy in the orphanage gradually build up the story, and in the last few chapters he is faced with the decision of whether to accept the child or not. I won’t give away the ending of course. Suffice to say these chapters had my full attention.