Resist by Tom Palmer

Tom took as his inspiration for this book the life of Audrey Hepburn. He is at pains to point out that it is not a biography. Audrey Hepburn rarely spoke about her experiences in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands. Rather, he has used the few details available and added them to copious research of his own, and other people’s memories of Audrey and the occupation generally to write this piece of fiction.

By 1943 Edda’s family has suffered much at the hands of the Germans already, and things are only getting worse. There’s increasingly little to eat, not enough fuel to cook or keep warm and the constant threat of being arrested by the Nazis. Edda is no daredevil hero but she knows that she must fight back whatever her family feels about it. Words, though, are one thing; action is another. Is she brave enough to risk everything when the Resistance comes calling?

Tom Palmer has a wonderful ability to get under the skin of his protagonists. As I read, not only could I picture the actual physical scenes of the book, but I was also able to enter into the emotional lives of the characters, and begin to comprehend the precariousness of their situation and the general underlying stress with which they lived. And Resist has that added dimension of being inspired by an actual person. This is not a story, my brain kept telling me. It’s how people like me actually lived. Because it is Audrey Hepburn’s life that has inspired the book, my brain had to battle with the contrast between her life in war-torn Europe and the glamour that surrounded the public persona I grew up seeing on screen.

I can’t recommend it highly enough. As ever, Barrington Stoke has commissioned a brilliant novel from an author whose books are, I believe, only getting better. And a word, too, for Tom Clohosy Cole whose atmospheric cover and footer illustrations add to the book’s general appeal.