As someone who tends not to read historical novels I was surprised how much I liked this one. The novel flashes back and forth between the present and the late 1940's and onwards. Sarah's journey was compelling, especially in the first half of the novel and I found the description of life during those war/post-war years fascinating. Limprecht has a real gift for prose and there were many moments where I was caught up in her words.

"I wasn't going to dive into the wrecked ship of his past, swimming through the dark, eerie cabins, light falling through cracks in sea-rotted planks. I wanted us to float, sleepily, in salt water beneath the sun. Eyes shut with the light making patterns inside our lids. I wanted to think I was all he needed."

The biggest downfall of this novel for me was the storyline set in the present. Hannah's story was given so little attention considering the gravity of her struggle. Were her issues supposed to parallel Sarah's life? I couldn't quite make that connection. Ultimately, it felt very haphazardly thrown into the story to make Hannah a complex character rather than just the supporting character in Sarah's story. Sarah has such a rich and beautiful story to tell that I think this would have been a better book without Hannah.

As I continued through the novel I felt like the writing became lazier (although I'm reticent to use that word). We merely skimmed over many years in Sarah's life to catch up to the present as though we were just seeing pictures of her life in a scrapbook. It became harder to connect with her and feel attached to her journey because we saw so little of it. I found myself wising the book was longer so we could have explored her relationship with Jim and her own children more deeply. And then just as we start to get somewhere with Hannah's story and perhaps a satisfying conclusion to Sarah's, the novel ends. I closed the book feeling as though there were several chapters missing. So while I very much enjoyed the journey the destination was only half formed and leaves me with a bit of disappointment.

Ultimately, I am keen to read more books my Limprecht because I love her writing and the way she can get into her characters heads. ( )

Deftly woven story.A great read ( )

The Passengers, Eleanor Limprecht’s third novel, offers an interesting insight into a wartime phenomenon that was unique in place and time. When Australia became a base for US operations during WW2, an influx of friendly young men with generous spending habits transformed the cities that hosted them. In Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney, anxious young local males watched in dismay as the handsome Americans charmed their sweethearts, (resentment at one stage erupting into serious violence in the so-called ‘Battle of Brisbane‘). Of the million or so Americans who were here, 10,000 stayed on in Australia after 1945 as ‘war husbands’ while 12,000 young women made their way to America as ‘war brides’.
What makes the story of the war brides unique is that Australia was uniquely insular in those days. It was (still is!) a long way from anywhere, and travel was prohibitively expensive. Whereas today Australians are great long-haul travellers and at any time about a million of us are living and working overseas, back then a journey by sea took weeks and plane travel was out of the question for nearly everyone. Australia’s war brides were unlike women from the UK who could slip across the Channel to experience ‘being abroad’ and ‘foreign travel’ in Europe – where an extensive rail network brought a diversity of cultures within easy and potentially affordable reach. For Australians, it wasn’t commonplace to have friends and relations living and working anywhere in the British Empire – from Africa to India to Southeast Asia. (One side of my quite ordinary British-born family produced a hospital matron and a colonial administrator in India during the 1920s, and as English children in the 1950s we did not think this at all exotic, it was just somewhere on the pink bits of the world map). But until the arrival of jet aircraft, most Australians could expect to live and die in Australia without ever setting foot outside it.
So for young women to travel alone to a place they knew only from Hollywood movies, to be reunited with a whirlwind romance was more than an adventure. It was a leap into the unknown in more ways than one.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2018/03/29/the-passengers-by-eleanor-limprecht-bookrevi... ( )