Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2005 09:51:34 -0500
From: "Michael Walsh" <MJW at press.jhu.edu>
To: <wsfalist at keithlynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] I see stars
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>

Reviews for the OEB edition of The Separation:

>From Publishers Weekly [PW goes to bookstores]
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."

>From Booklist [Booklist goes to librarians]
*Starred Review*
 Historian Stuart Gratton, enjoying some success with his books on
World War II, is tracing a mystery involving twin brothers and their
roles in the war. The brothers, both known as J. L. Sawyer, won bronze
medals for Britain in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin; witnessed the rise of
Adolph Hitler; and rescued Birgit, a beautiful German Jew. When Jack
marries Birgit, it triggers an estrangement that continues when the
brothers are confronted with their differing views on the war. Joe
enlists as a pilot with the RAF, and Jack, a conscientious objector,
serves with the British Red Cross. Diaries, letters, and documents
divulge the actions and emotions of the twins as well as the confusion
of identities and the motivations of both ordinary citizens and powerful
figures. Both brothers suffer injuries that cause them to lose their
sense of reality about the war, their relationships with Birgit, and
their ultimate personal fates. By focusing on these two young men, each
heroic in his own way, and the complexities of their relationships,
Priest offers a masterful look at how war affects individuals as well as
an exploration of personal identity.