Book Review of Dear Little Corpses by Nicola Upson

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An idyll shattered on the cusp of war.

This competent historical novel, set at the beginning of the Second World War, was read and reviewed even as the opening stages of the war in Ukraine were unfolding. But the atmosphere it evokes is quite different:

Britain in September 1939 may have been about to endure a siege by U-boat in the following years, but it was not under siege yet. Wages and living standards may seem quite poor to us, but they were so much better (and so many more people were receiving them) than in the period just after the Great War or in the Great Depression that other authors (who were there at the time) would come to look back at 1939 as a mini golden age. It was even possible to fly to America (“from Southampton” i.e. by flying boat), something that had only just happened and which (though the NAZIs did not realise this in time) completely changed the balance of power in the world. On the one hand, most of the characters in the story are anxious about the impending war, but on the other hand the little luxuries that make life bearable are still widely available (after a long period where they couldn’t be afforded) even if international flights are an expensive novelty. The author captures these contrasts very well.

It is a murder mystery and the twists in the plot are quite major and come at just the right moment, rather than being constant and intended to keep the reader in a state of tension. There’s a difference, too, between feeling guilt and being guilty which is very shocking but also very true to life. The upheaval caused by the mass evacuation of children from the big cities provides an opportunity for two shocking crimes, but also an opportunity for justice to be served over other crimes which had gone unnoticed before that upheaval.

Two central older female characters are lesbians. This isn’t wokism: there were indeed lots of all female couples and households after the Great War and, unlike in the period after the Second World War, the situation was quietly understood and in general nothing was ever said. The two lesbian characters worry (only slightly) about a scandal, and it may be realistic that they should have worried, but the situation was commonplace; it was NEVER illegal and as George Orwell would one day remark, “the worst insult in the English language is ‘nosey parker!’” Or, at least it was before the Second World War and the Cold War. The author does not show people taking lesbianism for granted, but she is at least realistic in the way that none of her other characters choose to see anything amiss about two ladies old enough to have lost fiances, living together and being openly fond of each other.

This is a very good book.

Dear Little Corpses by Nicola Upson is published in the UK by Faber and Faber on the 19^th of May 2022