Book review: Lucia's War, by Susan Lanigan

Hitting the right note

‘Where to begin? Ah, it is not easy to sing it straight: I must do it in false codas and grace notes’ (Lucia’s War)

I’ve been trying to distill what I like most about my friend Susan Lanigan’s new book, Lucia’s War. I loved Susan’s first novel White Feathers when it was published in 2014… but I’ve come to believe that Lucia’s War is even better.

Her latest novel is set in the final years of the Great War, with a young Jamaican woman, Lucia Percival, trying to eke out a career as a soprano in a cold, sometimes brutal London.
We meet Lucia as she relays the story of her life to a journalist in the far distant future of 1950, and so we know that she has gone on to find fame and fortune. But as she casts her mind back to the fraught days of 1917, the obstacles facing her seem insurmountable.

We become aware that she has been through a painful personal ordeal that has left her scarred. She has formed a sometimes uneasy alliance with Eva, the Irish heroine of White Feathers who is still grieving for the lover she lost, in a society where Lucia’s intelligence, talent and drive count for nothing when they are possessed by a young black woman.

However, her luck looks set to take a turn for the better when she meets a handsome young composer who falls under her spell and uses his clout to help her fulfil her career ambitions.

If only the past didn’t have a habit of resurfacing and confronting her with difficult choices that will have far-reaching consequences.

The plot bristles with energy, gaining momentum over the course of the novel and reaching its climax right at the very end, in a final scene that will have the reader wiping away a tear or two.

Lanigan deftly draws the reader into the grimy, dispiriting world of 1917 London, where an entire generation is struggling with the social and psychological toll exacted by years of warfare. From the acknowledgments, I can see that the author has done considerable research into this era and she summons up a sense of time and place in the most vivid terms. 

Most troublingly and perhaps presciently, the author also evokes the extent to which racism was endemic in society at that time, running like a persistent computer program in the background, bubbling to the surface from time to time to devastating effect. It’s a mark of Lanigan’s skill as a storyteller that none of this feels forced or contrived.

Meanwhile, in Lucia, Lanigan has created a fully realised heroine with an intelligence and wit to equal her beauty, charisma and talent. That’s not to say that Lucia is a flawless character but her failings, say, her beliefs about personal morality (which would be perfectly in line with her contemporaries) or her sometimes transactional relationship with her friend Eva, only serve to make her a more believable and relatable figure.

Lucia is no ingenue blindly finding her way in the world. She is in the world, she knows how it works, and it’s still a struggle. There are no pat life lessons to be learned in discrete little episodes across the arc of the novel. Just a strong woman getting on with her life in the least forgiving of circumstances.

In fact, the portrayal of a complicated woman doing her best to survive is probably the element I cherished most about this book.

I can think of no higher praise than to say that as soon as I finished Lucia’s War, I wanted to go back to the beginning and re-immerse myself in Lucia's world all over again.

You’ll love this story if you like historical fiction, if you like strong women characters, if you like plots that are driven by characters’ own qualities and decisions, and – more than anything – if you like beautiful writing.

* Lucia's War (Idee Fixe Press) is published on ebook; see susanlanigan.com for further information about Susan Lanigan's other work