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ee_em_em_aye 's review for:
Nine Days
by Toni Jordan
I recently joined The Digital New Zealand Fan Club - a Tumblr where people who love searching the historical content on Digital NZ share their favourite finds. Scrolling through pages of old photos I often wonder about the stories behind the photos.
Author Toni Jordan had a similar experience before writing Nine Days; while searching through the State Library of Victoria’s Argus Newspaper Collection of Photographs she came across the photograph now shown on the cover of her novel.
She says, “The photograph, taken during the war at a railway station in Melbourne, was the most romantic thing I’d ever seen. I stuck it over my desk but for a long time I thought I’d never find a story to fit: grand and sweeping, but also intimate and fragile. Then one day, I just knew…”
The story Jordan creates is about Connie and Jack – the story of how they met, their families, and growing up and surviving during the war. It’s a family story of survival, of what’s important and how the decisions we make can affect our family for generations to come.
Told through nine chapters, or ‘days’, Jordan uses the nine central characters closest to Connie and Jack to piece together their story. Well written in a very readable style that is descriptive but not lyrical, I quickly became engrossed and returned to the book at every opportunity eagerly wanting to unravel this ordinary family’s history.
Jordan is a master of character – although none of the characters had time to become particularly developed (given they only ‘owned’ a chapter each) I felt I knew each one. Within a couple of sentences I knew Francis wasn’t the type of person I’d like and Alec’s chapter was so aptly descriptive of a teenage boy that I felt repelled by it. A scene in a health food shop where wholesome Charlotte served an IKEA mother was so well played that I could instantly picture the relationship between these two women from different worlds, yet Jordan resisted the urge to cast aspersions on either’s life choices.
Nine Days will appeal to the masses. It’s descriptive but not literary, character-filled but easy to follow and the fragments of history and family ‘clues’ throughout the book are easy to put together and tie into a satisfying end.
Author Toni Jordan had a similar experience before writing Nine Days; while searching through the State Library of Victoria’s Argus Newspaper Collection of Photographs she came across the photograph now shown on the cover of her novel.
She says, “The photograph, taken during the war at a railway station in Melbourne, was the most romantic thing I’d ever seen. I stuck it over my desk but for a long time I thought I’d never find a story to fit: grand and sweeping, but also intimate and fragile. Then one day, I just knew…”
The story Jordan creates is about Connie and Jack – the story of how they met, their families, and growing up and surviving during the war. It’s a family story of survival, of what’s important and how the decisions we make can affect our family for generations to come.
Told through nine chapters, or ‘days’, Jordan uses the nine central characters closest to Connie and Jack to piece together their story. Well written in a very readable style that is descriptive but not lyrical, I quickly became engrossed and returned to the book at every opportunity eagerly wanting to unravel this ordinary family’s history.
Jordan is a master of character – although none of the characters had time to become particularly developed (given they only ‘owned’ a chapter each) I felt I knew each one. Within a couple of sentences I knew Francis wasn’t the type of person I’d like and Alec’s chapter was so aptly descriptive of a teenage boy that I felt repelled by it. A scene in a health food shop where wholesome Charlotte served an IKEA mother was so well played that I could instantly picture the relationship between these two women from different worlds, yet Jordan resisted the urge to cast aspersions on either’s life choices.
Nine Days will appeal to the masses. It’s descriptive but not literary, character-filled but easy to follow and the fragments of history and family ‘clues’ throughout the book are easy to put together and tie into a satisfying end.