The Girl Who Fell From The Sky Book

World War 2 is raging and Marian Sutro part French, part British and fluent in both languages, is somewhat flattered and excited when she is recruited by the SEO. She is transferred to the remote highlands of Scotland where she is trained as an agent and prepared for sabotage, subterfuge and to kill and she becomes acutely aware with some unease that this is much more serious and dangerous than she thought. Eventually, when the moon is right she is dropped into France as a courier for the resistance movement. But her real mission is to get to Paris to contact Yvette, a radio operator vital to the work of the resistance and crucially to find Clement Pelletier, a nuclear physicist who with others can make the atomic bomb a reality and whom the British desperately want back in England. France is a dangerous place and none more so than occupied Paris. This is not the Paris she remembers. The city is bleak, threatening, hushed with fear and suspicion and shadowy figures. Papers are demanded and identities checked at any time often accompanied by intimate body searches. As she makes her way through streets and alleyways desperate to avoid attention, the tension is palpable and although her training has been thorough and strenuous, panic and fear are constant companions for Marian (alias secret agent Alice). Who can she trust? Will someone betray her?At times I felt that I was an observer rather than a reader, rather like watching a 1950s black and white film, there was no colour no brightness in Paris at this time, all had been erased and replaced with terror and hardship yet unbelievable courage and resistance and in there lay hope and this is finely portrayed by Mawer, storyteller extraordinaire.This is a beautifully written book, tense, atmospheric with a slow yet unrelenting build up to an inevitable conclusion. Highly recommended.Read More