Like any street April Grove in Portsmouth has its good & bad neighbours its gossip scandal & romance. But the outbreak of war in 1939 changes everything
- especially for the children. Uprooted from their familiar urban existence they are evacuated (some happily some not) to the country. Then there are the teenagers whose first loves are accelerated & intensified by the threat of separation; & men & women too old to fight who hold the life of the street together. Based on the author's own childhood memories of growing up near Portsmouth this is a novel which shows us what England was really like then
- a story told with such nostalgia & charm that you leave the world it describes longing for the chance to return.