Richard & Judy Introduce The French House by Jacquie Bloese

It is 1940. France has fallen to Hitler’s victorious tank divisions. The British have somehow managed to slip from the jaws of defeat, at Dunkirk. But the Channel Islands – much closer to France than England and impossible to defend – swiftly fall under Nazi control. Yet strangely – even perversely – love between the hated occupier and the oppressed occupied is possible. And it happens.

Richard's Review:

We’ve all grown up on Dad’s Army and stories of Britain’s heroic resistance to the Nazis during WW2. But many forget – or simply don’t realise – that a part of the United Kingdom, like France and most of Europe, fell under the baleful control of Hitler. The Channel Islands – Guernsey, Jersey and the rest of them – were swiftly occupied by the Germans. The British population there had, to be quite frank, a truly horrible time over four grim years. There was even a concentration camp.

But there were sometimes exceptions to the awfulness; events on the human scale; relationships between invaders and oppressed that occasionally blossomed like rare flowers in a desert. The French House is that story. It is deeply involving, utterly absorbing, and sometimes heart-wrenching. We loved it.

Judy's Review:

Left almost totally deaf after falling down a lift-shaft as a young man, Emile returns from the New World to his old one – the Channel Islands. As he enters middle age, World War Two erupts and his peaceful backwater is churned beyond recognition with the arrival of the Nazis. Emile can see their swastika-crossed planes as they swoop over Guernsey, but he can’t hear their Stuka-dive shrieks.

Billeted on a Guernsey family, German officer Leutnant Schreiber is happier holding a paintbrush than a Luger. And his politeness and gentleness – so at odds with the brutal Nazi profile – will blur loyalties and entwine him in a deeply moving love story. Just as you will be entwined, too.