RACHEL BILLINGTON

Occasionally panoramic, more often intimate, in Clouds of Love and War author Rachel Billington balances a detailed and highly researched picture of the life of a Second World War Spitfire pilot with the travails and ambitions of a young woman too often on her own. The result is both a gripping story of war and a sensitive story of love, a love that struggles to survive.Eddie and Eva meet on the eve of the Second World War. Eddie only wants to be a flyer, to find escape in the clouds from his own complicated family. However, the Battle of Britain makes a pilots life a dangerous way to flee reality. Eva has her own passionate longing: to become a painter. When Evas Jewish mother disappears to Germany, she is left alone with her elderly father. Both Eddie and Eva come of age at a time that teaches them that happiness is always fleeting, but there are things worth living or dying for.Through the connecting stories of these young people and their wider families, and against a background of southern county airfields, London, Oxford, Dorset and France, Rachel Billington brings the world of war time England, now eighty years in the past, back to life.

A woman lies unconscious on the carpet of a smart Westminster apartment, one red high-heeled shoe has fallen off... A younger woman lies with her eyes closed, half-hidden under a drinks cabinet... Her fingers clutch an empty bottle... What happens when a mother withholds her love? When she has no love to withhold? When she sees her three daughters as obstacles to her own formidable career? This is the story of three sisters, Millie, Di and Cleo. They are the war babies. Growing up in a world still in turmoil, hungover from war, the sisters struggle to leave behind their mother and build their own lives. Each sister is lost in her own world where extreme need leads to extreme behaviour. Then a tragic event forces Cleo, the youngest and wildest, to become the catalyst to smash the pattern. Who will adapt and survive in this new world? Who will find peace? From London to New York and to Vietnam, the focus shifts from one sister to the next, putting human nature, its flaws and its virtues, under the spotlight. With elements of a psychological thriller, Rachel Billington observes her characters with clinical detachment, but also with wit and understanding. Yet there is hope at the heart of this story which will leave the reader wondering long after the final twist is revealed.

Durante una mattinata di tranquillo shopping Lydia, la giovane protagonista, viene accoltellata dal commesso del negozio dove sta facendo la spesa. Le ferite fisiche, anche se gravi, guariranno, piu difficile sara la cicatrizzazione delle ferite psicologiche. A complicare le cose e il rapporto che si instaura tra la vittima e il suo aggressore, Patrick, uomo piacevole ed elegante, un classico insospettabile. L'autrice ha scelto la tecnica del racconto parallelo: a capitoli alterni seguiamo la storia di Lydia e quella di Patrick. Lydia e una giornalista, Patrick in carcere e diventato un giornalista, i due finiscono per lavorare nello stesso giornale. Il romanzo e ispirato a un fatto di cronaca.