Bonfire Night
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4.8 • 4 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
“A most tender work of art...Bonfire Night is a treasure of a novel, beautifully written with the unflinching style and subtle psychological insights of such masters as Ian McEwan and Graham Swift.” –Natalie Jenner, internationally bestselling author of The Jane Austen Society and Bloomsbury Girls
Spanning from England's anti-fascism protests of 1936 through the aftermath of WWII, this moving, intricately wrought historical novel brings together a young Irish Catholic photographer and a British Jewish medical student, each discovering the price of love, art, and ambition…
London, 1936: At twenty-one, Kate Grifferty is a press photographer in a Fleet Street agency, an unusual job for a young woman. But Kate is both talented and daring, recklessly going wherever the story might be—including, one October day, to an anti-fascism protest in East London. There, she meets David Rabatkin, a brilliant Jewish medical student. While his idealistic brother is eager to go to Spain and join the fight for the Republic, David knows where his path lies: at home, fulfilling the expectations of his profession and his family.
Kate is exposed for the first time to the dangers and demands of David’s world, where marrying within the Jewish faith is seen as not only preferable, but key to survival. Kate neither expects nor wants to be any man’s wife, hampered by convention. And though she and David are both outsiders, as war looms, other differences between them are thrown into sharp relief.
Brighton, 1940: Catastrophe forces Kate to flee London and the onslaught of war finds her working at her sister’s seaside boarding house, while David tends patients at a busy London hospital as the Blitz rages. But Kate’s challenges and disappointments have only deepened her desire to capture images of life unfurling around her, the beauty and violence, struggles and surprising joys. And soon fate and ambition will align, providing her with the chance to make her mark at last . . .
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
An Irish Catholic photojournalist and a Jewish medical student fall in love and navigate the obstacles put in their way by their demanding families in Bliss's wrenching debut. It's October 1936 when ambitious young photographer Kate Grifferty covers an antifascist protest in London's East End and catches the eye of protestor David Rabatkin. Over the following months, they hide their affair from David's Jewish family, who would disown him if he married outside the religion. Eventually caving to familial pressure, David breaks off their relationship, and Kate flees to her older sister's boardinghouse in Brighton, carrying with her an enormous secret. When she and David unexpectedly reunite during the height of the Blitz four years later, their feelings for each other are both as hot and as conflicted as ever. David is ready to defy his family, but then Kate gets the career opportunity of a lifetime, which would require her to stay single. Kate's ambivalence over David grows frustrating at times, but the story comes alive in Bliss's meticulous account of the threats of fascism and antisemitism as well as in her exploration of the messiness of love and family. This is a well-crafted contribution to WWII fiction.
