WATERDROPS by John Lucas

The first half of this splendid novel is set in 1944. David and Sarah have been evacuated to a quiet Midland village; their beloved father has been absent for three years and their mother has a suspicious friendship with an American. There is some kind of disaster and 50 years later we meet a middle-aged brother and sister who have grown up without their parents and return to their old home, which now looks quite different, to work out what happened. We think we know the answer, but we don’t. I couldn’t put it down.

This author remembers what it was like to be a child in wartime and is particularly good on the mystifying behaviour of adults. When the children become adults themselves, they have a better understanding of what the war generation endured. “Great suffering, little glory,” one of the characters says. Terrible things happen in war, and not only on the battlefield.