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An uplifting and inspiring novel based on the true story of a librarian who created an underground shelter during World War II, perfect for readers of The Paris Library or The Last Bookshop in London. London, 1944: Clara Button is no ordinary librarian. While war ravages the city above her, Clara has risked everything she holds dear to turn the Bethnal Green tube station into the country’s only underground library. Down here, a secret community thrives with thousands of bunk beds, a nursery, a café, and a theater—offering shelter, solace, and escape from the bombs that fall upon their city.           Along with her glamorous best friend and assistant Ruby Munroe, Clara ensures the library is the beating heart of life underground. But as the war drags on, the women's determination to remain strong in the face of adversity is tested to the limits when it may come at the price of keeping those closest to them alive.

Details of the book :

Author : Kate Thompson
★★★★☆ 4.5 from 5 stars (986 Reviews)
Langue : English
ISBN-10 : 1538724219
File size: 8 MB

Support format : PDF, EPUB, Kindle, Audio HTML, RTF, TXT, MOBI.
Compatible device : Android, Apple, iPad, iPhone, PC, and Amazon Kindle.


This was a wonderful book ! Highly recommend - about real people in the east end of London! It covered the day to day struggle of the east Enders and the very human stories of struggle and survival - The Little Wartime Library PDF Kindle Online lire epub The Little Wartime Library, Kate Thompson’s new novel of World War II, brings to life the fictional community that grew up around a very real underground library in London’s East End from the Blitz to the end of the war. Fans of Call the Midwife can readily picture this part of London and the working poor living there a decade later. The socioeconomic situation seems much the same during the wartime years presented here. Thompson’s novel depicts the unique extended family which shared reading melded together in those dark years of fear and bombing; the healing power of love and books and the pain of grief complicated by guilt and shame also thread throughout the novel.The Bethnal Green Public Library, community and educational center for the borough, was bombed on the very first night of the Blitz. Its roof and most of the books were destroyed. Underground in Bethnal Green, the unfinished Tube station became the ad hoc air raid shelter for thousands of people without other options. Miles of triple-bunked beds lined the platforms. Services including a café, a medical office, a theatre, and a hairdresser’s provided for the community’s practical needs, since many of the Bethnal Green residents lived in the Tube shelter from dusk to daylight for 5 or 6 years. The real-life librarians of Bethnal Green decided the shelter needed a library too. What better way, they thought, to escape from the terror and find a way to grow through the war than to read? This was a free public lending library, with a variety of books on loan with a shelter ticket the only prerequisite.This novel invents a widowed children’s librarian, Clara Button, to run that real underground library. As a children’s librarian, she naturally reaches out to the “Tube Rats,” as the children of the shelter are known, and starts regular times of reading aloud. Her interactions with these children, especially Sparrow and Beatty, were some of my favorite parts of the book.Clara’s assistant and best friend, Ruby, is broken from a different kind of bereavement, based on another true story from the Bethnal Green Tube station during World War II. While Clara turns her grief into nurture and outreach to the children, Ruby turns her grief into self-destructive habits of drink and promiscuity.In addition to the children’s story hours, Clara and Ruby launch a book club for the factory women. Their tastes run to more salacious fare than I am comfortable with, and much is made of an American romance novel which was risqué enough to provoke the censors on both sides of the Atlantic.To be honest, Clara isn’t sure whether she likes that novel either, but her aim is to serve the shelter residents with literary escape from the very difficult circumstances of their daily life, as well as to inform and educate. This is a democratic view of library holdings, and the book pushes back against the idea of censorship and book bans.Additional tragedy strikes Clara and the community in the second half of the book, and the suspense and resolution moved me to tears. I liked so many of the characters in this book, and Clara seems to be a lovely person with whom to share a cuppa and talk books. She and Billy the ambulance man are a pair I can’t help but root for, and their hearts to serve others are as big as this underground library is small.Readers of my blog know how much I love books and reading, and their superpower to transport to other times and places and even eyes and feet is one of God’s gifts. Reading for escape truly is a useful coping mechanism in hard times and keeps us sane in the better times too. It enlarges our horizons and grows our empathy. Sometimes, it sneaks past our defenses and takes us by the hand to grieve our ungrieved grief and cry stored-up tears as we walk with the characters through their trials. This book did that for me.While I thoroughly enjoyed learning about the Bethnal Green Tube shelter life in the novel itself, I enjoyed the historical material at the back of the book even more. The photos were a priceless addition. Kate Thompson’s research was clearly thorough and a labor of love.That said, I feel compelled to offer some content warnings. If this book were a movie, it would probably be PG-13 or TV-14 for language, alcohol use, sexuality, wartime violence (bombings), and some intense depictions of domestic violence. Suicide, PTSD, panic attacks, and depression also appear.As such I cannot give an **unqualified recommendation of this book. I do recommend an Internet search into Bethnal Green Tube shelter life, and if you decide to read this novel you might start by thumbing through the photos in the historical section. For my fellow fans of World War II fiction, I can heartily endorse Madeline Miller’s The Last Bookshop in London and Kristy Cambron’s The Paris Dressmaker. My tastes run more G-PG in content, so those gave me purer enjoyment with fewer mixed feelings. Not everyone shares my preferences there, but I hope in reading my thoughts you have a clearer idea whether this book will suit your taste and sensitivities of conscience. PDF The Little Wartime Library read epub Sometimes it only takes a glance at the title to know that herein lies a soulmatch book. Library love, WWII London underground community, and the resourceful spirit of a pair of women librarians and the community of the Bethnal Green underground tugged at my heart and left only satisfaction in their wake.The Little Wartime Library, is a book framed by author’s message and notes as well as modern-day prologue and epilogue. The heart of the story is set during WWII era London during the devastating days of bombing. Right when it seems the most nonsensical time to put time and resources into a lending library, theater, or music, is exactly the time to do it and they did. People needed this library and the determined help of Clara the Librarian more than ever.This ode to libraries and WWII era books and librarians introduces a community of people brought together by war and needed the isle of calm the library gave them when up against terrors like refugees from the Nazi occupation of the Channel Islands and the bombings on the home front while a nation is in a desperate war. Based on the real existence of the Bethnal Green underground community, the historical authenticity and historical mile markers- like the Bethnal Green tube disaster, Jersey, and other devastation- settled over the story as added layers letting the character-driven plot action and colorful, complex characters shine in the forefront.The narration is shared in alternating turns by Clara the librarian at the center of it all and gutsy Ruby her assistant from the lower class London East End, a shining character who I enjoyed quite a lot. They were up against those, mostly male authority, who thought they knew better whether there should be a library or not and their own personal pains, losses, secrets, and demons filled in the conflict. But, like old-style bartenders with Google-savvy minds, the librarians were more than book pushers and really heard out people and dispensed advice and help with their book offerings (hats off to the librarians who are still at it today). I loved seeing Clara and Ruby making a difference for this unique community living in the underground tubes (subways) after the bombs started pounding aboveground London to bits. I liked the little romance for Clara though she’s getting past her loss so it wasn’t the forefront of the story.My emotions were tugged in several directions from heartbreak to hope, to bittersweet and joy. The pages flew past and I was finished reading before I knew it. This Ode to Libraries left me well-pleased and it will surprise no one that I think all booklovers whether they like historical era or not should give it a go. ePUB The Little Wartime Library fonte Download PDF The Little Wartime Library