The best novels about ordinary people doing extraordinary things during the World Wars

This book haunted me long after I’d finished. Telling the story of an English bomber pilot in World War Two—an ordinary hero—and his endearing eccentric family, A God In Ruins ponders the brutality of fate. The narrative is woven through different timeframes, plunging us into the real human experience and the unbearable moral question of carrying out acts of war. The novel made me question my concept of reality, of memory, and of choosing a path in life. Have you ever wondered if your own parallel universe is unspooling simultaneously as another lifetime?  

Opening in the second half of the 1930s, this is the first in a five-book saga chronicling the extended Cazalet family living under the shadow of World War Two, based loosely on the author’s own life. We hear from a whole cast of characters, their loves, fears, and foibles: the children’s excitable, misguided take on war, and the adult’s version, when they know only too well. The different voices are distinct and relatable; the writing is a lesson in storytelling. Immersed in the almost-century old world of London and the Sussex countryside, I devoured the whole series, finishing one book only to pick up the next.

The Kent countryside has a strong enough presence in this book to become a character in its own right, when the exquisite beauty of an English summer contrasts with the lethal Battle of Britain dog fights leaving vapour trails in the sky overhead. As a local young woman befriends a group of brave, doomed fighter pilots, the story captures the desperation and the absurdities of conflict, and the tender nature of transient and yet hopeful love. The author was commissioned by the RAF to write about the war, and I can tell from his pinpoint, unflinching detail of that unsettling time, that he was a first-hand eyewitness. 

An admirable sense of rebellion and freedom that the Second World War brought young people is encapsulated in this book by the author, who herself lived through those times. Mary Wesley’s novels are quirky and unexpected, and peopled with eccentric, sympathetic, and lovable characters who face the dangers of the Blitz and all the uncertainty of war with a certain poise. I love the concepts of escaping convention and the kindness of strangers. To read this novel—which I have done at least five times—is like stepping into a warm bath. It’s my go-to when I need a dose of familiarity and comfort.

Heading back further in time to the First World War, this novel is unforgettable and devastating. What starts as a rather sexy story of forbidden love between our English soldier protagonist and a French woman is turned on its head when we are propelled into the barbarity and slaughter of the trenches. Entering our hero’s mind on the night before the Battle of the Somme, and again when the whistles blow at first light, I felt physical sickening shock as I turned the pages, not wishing to continue reading, but unable to stop myself.