Product Description

`You know what they say about GIs and English girls’ knickers,’ ran the wartime joke, `One Yank and they’re off.’ When Gloria met Ron, he was an American pilot who thought nothing of getting hit by shrapnel in the cockpit. She was working in a munitions factory in Bristol during the Blitz, but still found time to grab what she wanted. Ciggies. Sex. American soldiers. But war has an effect on people. Gloria did all sorts of things she wouldn’t normally do - evil things, some of them - because she might be dead tomorrow. Or someone might.
Now, fifty years on, it’s payback time. In her old folks' home, Gloria is forced to remember the real truth about her and Ron, and confront the secret at the heart of her dramatic home front story.
In a gripping, vibrant evocation of wartime Britain, Liz Jensen explores the dark impulses of women whose war crimes are committed on the home front, in the name of sex, survival, greed, and love .

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #160461 in Books
• Published on: 2003-04-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Liz Jensen's new novel, War Crimes for the Home, has an unlikely heroine in Gloria Taylor, nee Winstanley, a game old bird who loves a good joke and is not afraid to call a spade a spade. Or a slut a slut.

After a minor stroke, Gloria finds herself in Sea View, an old people's home with a nice big television in the lounge, where, if you look carefully through the big picture window, you can see the sea. There's also a problem with Gloria's memory. She may have Alzheimer's, she may just have selective memory loss-- or if you talk to certain members of her family, she may not have anything wrong with her mind other than a bit of deliberate Gloria bolshiness.

Gloria's son Hank and his family come to visit regularly and one day, a woman called Jill turns up and starts asking funny questions. Gloria would rather everyone just left her alone. It's bad enough seeing that little kid sitting on her bed dripping pond weed and blood most nights. She really annoys Gloria.

Funny thing is Gloria can remember so much about the war, when she and her sister worked in a munitions factory in Bristol and she met Ron, or Raan, the GI who initiated her in the ways of the flesh. One Yank and they're off too true! She can remember her first date with Ron, going to see the Great Zedorro, a hypnotist who got her up on stage and made her feel like a rod of iron. She can remember, the full gory details, the day one of the factory girls lost her arm and half her shoulder. And the day the telegram arrived about her sister's boyfriend and how Marge went off to drive ambulances in London and Gloria got lumbered with an Irish evacuee and her snotty kids. She can even remember much later, after the war finally ended, working as a pro back in London, where her Dad had worked the meat down at Smithfield market.

But there's so much more poor old Gloria can't remember. Things her son and the Jill woman keep ranting on about. Why do they want her to rake over all that boring old stuff? Why can't they just let sleeping dogs lie? What does it all matter now?

In War Crimes for the Home, Liz Jensen has conjured up a fabulously inventive, gripping tale; a sort of modern twist on the whodunnit, or in this case, who-dunn-what, with a very real, very spiky protagonist. Gloria bristles with indignation, speaks her mind however harsh it sounds and loves to shock with her filthy jokes and even filthier suggestions--which means that War Crimes is not for the prudish. It is however a wonderfully original but painfully raw story of an era when people lived in constant fear, hearts ruled heads and everyone lived for the moment. And Gloria was no exception. Although sometimes the moment turned out to be the future and people have to learn to live with the consequences, however unpalatable they may be. --Carey Green

Daily Mail, July 19th 2002
"It's a tribute to Jensen that such a brutal tale can be told with jauntiness"

Sunday Times
'A moving, hilarious exploration of a life lived in shadow; a story of one woman's - perhaps Everywoman's - war'

Customer Reviews

Exuisitely rendered story of loss and regret
Beautifully told with flawed yet likeable characters weaving an excellent tale of betrayal and regret from the 1940's to the present. Fast paced page turner.

a shocking eye-opener
The heroine Gloria's unrefined manner of speaking put me off a bit, but I gradually became immersed in the plot. It's a story with dark humour, more sad than funny, on what happened among the unsung heroes of the war, how most of them weren't really heroes in the true sense but merely survivors of the war's atrocities. The author wrote very well--she was able to transport me to a place and time I've never been and was able to make it feel like it was in the here and now. I especially liked how she slowly revealed Gloria's secrets from various angles. It made me think of the horrible things ordinary people are capable of doing in extraordinary circumstances, and why we can never effectively judge other people's actions out of context. A wonderful read, I highly recommend it.

A great little story!
Although I wanted to dislike Gloria for her courseness and low morals I couldn't. She was rather a sad character, yet at times made me laugh by her bluntness and the way she described others.
Although I'm sure that this is not how the majority of girls behaved during the war, I'm equally sure that some did. It was a poignant and honest description of how people must have felt in times of war when you never knew if you'd see someone again whether it be your boyfriend/father/brother on a bombing mission or your neighbour in a bombing raid.

Some of the descriptions reminded me of stories my parents and grandparents have spoken of; dying your legs with tea and trying to draw a straight seam up the back of your leg, food rationing, the Americans being 'over paid, over sexed and over here' and even the term "mind your own beeswax" rang a bell.

I think Jenson managed really well to capture what it must be like to be old and living in a nursing home, feeling old one minute but still caught up in your memories that make you always remain young.