Date: Tue, 18 Oct 2005 12:07:49 -0400
From: "Michael Walsh" <MJW at press.jhu.edu>
To: <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>
Subject: [WSFA] Wow! Yikes!
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>

from Publishers Weekly:

Separation
Priest, Christopher (Author)

ISBN: 1882968336
Old Earth Books
Published 2005-10
Hardcover, $25.00
Fiction | Science Fiction - General

[Starred review] In this subtle, unsettling alternative WWII history
from British author Priest (The Prestige ), Jack Sawyer is an RAF bomber
pilot who encourages his government to distrust the peace proposal
offered by renegade Nazi Rudolph Hess. At the same time, perhaps, Jack's
identical twin brother, Joe, is a pacifist Red Cross staffer aiding
peace negotiations with a German delegation headed by Hess. Jack's
actions help shape the events we remember; Joe's lead to a truce between
Germany and Britain in 1941 that results in a disturbingly familiar
postwar world. Convincingly detailed diaries, scraps of published texts,
declassified transcripts and more baffle a historian who tries to
reconcile different realities. The brothers themselves recognize the
uncertainty of motives and actions; Joe in particular struggles to
believe that he's making a better future even though he realizes how
much it costs him personally. Many alternative history novels are
bloodless extrapolations from mountains of data, but this one quietly
builds characters you care about - then leaves their dilemmas unresolved
as they try to believe that what they have done is "right."

PW reviews lots of books, only a few each week get a star.

mjw