Review: Emotional legacy of war
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 05 14, 2013
In Thirroul in 1948 the sound of the railway is a steady presence in Annika Lachlan's life. Then one day the trains don't run - there has been an accident further up the line, Annika is told, and her husband Mac's life has been lost. Suddenly widowed and alone with her eleven year old daughter Bella, Ani is forced to take a job as librarian in the small town's library.Enveloped in her grief but forced out of solitude by her new job, Ani comes into contact with other hurt souls. Roy McKinnon, a poet, whose wartime experiences have left him unable to write about the beauty he sees all around him. Doctor Frank Draper, recently returned from Germany where he has witnessed unspeakable horrors after the liberation of the concentration camps, and who blames himself for being unable to prevent the deaths of many patients in his care. And Iris McKinnon, who has waited years for her sweetheart to return from the war, only to find him scarred and battered, a changed man.As these troubled people meet, they find solace in each other's company as they try to rebuild their lives and come to term with their individual grief.Hay's beautiful prose takes the reader on a heartbreaking journey of discovery of loss and grief and the way different people deal with tragedy. As Annika progresses through the different stages of sudden widowhood - the shock, the anger, the fear and the bottomless sorrow - her job in the town's library brings her into contact with other people scarred by tragedy. Slowly she manages to bring joy back into her life, but her husband's death remains an omnipresent void in her life."The year I've had, Dr Draper, here, with my daughter, making sense of this strange new world. I've lost my husband. I have this job. I wake up in my room, in my house. And yet everything, everything is different."It took me quite a long time to connect with the characters in this book, but once I did I was quickly drawn into the story and its emotional landscape. The blurb talks about hope, and yet hope was a fleeting thing for me, like sunshine only briefly breaking through the clouds. It left me wondering if the people in the story could ever be whole again, especially after closing the last page. At what stage is the damage too great to ever being able to move on, to start anew?Anyone who has ever lost a loved one will be able to relate to some of the emotions described in this story. The Railwayman's Wife is not a cheerful book but one which invites introspection and reflection. It also skilfully draws the reader's attention to the emotional legacy of war, and its repercussions long after it is over, and many continents away from the battlefields. With her poetic prose, Hay brings to life the atmosphere of a small coastal town in post-war Australia and its people.