Reviews for The widow and her hero

The average rating for The widow and her hero based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-12-03 00:00:00 Ronnie Ritchie This is not the kind of book I would normally read - I prefer to avoid stories of war heroism and derring-do, but I am glad I made an exception for this, since Keneally's approach is brilliantly nuanced and full of moral ambiguity. The central story is largely based on fact - there were two Australian raids on Japanese held Singapore, and the second ended disastrously for the men involved. Keneally's masterstroke is to tell their story through the voice of a widow, who barely knew her young husband, but finds out more of his story piecemeal over the next 60 years. Perhaps the idea of the captured men awaiting execution filling their time rehearsing Shaw's The Devil's Disciple is a little fanciful, but this is a very moving story.

Review # 2 was written on 2021-02-07 00:00:00 Michael Alexakos From the beginning, we know the hero, Australian Captain Leo Waterhouse, was killed as a result of a clandestine raid during WWII. His widow, Grace, tells the story of what happened to her husband and how she dealt with it, over a period of time covering the 1940s to 2000s. This book explores the nature of heroism and grief. Keneally is obviously a talented writer. It must have been a challenge to figure out how to tell this tale through the widow’s point of view, since she remains outside the military chain of command and is not directly privy to the details of military operations. A number of outsiders are looking into how the mission went so horribly wrong, and they convey their findings to Grace, sometimes many years after the fact. She does not always want to hear these new accounts. She must then confront her grief in a new way, and it is a gut-wrenching experience all over again. The book is reflective in tone. The characters are easy to envision as real people. The settings in Australia, Singapore, and the Malay islands are vividly described. I very much enjoyed the literary references, especially the analogies to George Bernard Shaw’s The Devils’s Disciple. I need to read more of Keneally’s work.