Island song - Madeleine Bunting

In 1940, Helene, young, naive, and recently married, waves goodbye to her husband, who has enlisted in the British army. Her home, Guernsey, is soon invaded by the Germans, leaving her exposed to the hardships of occupation. Forty years later, her daughter, Roz, begins a search for the truth about her father, and stumbles into the secret history of her mother's life. Written with emotional acuity and passionate intensity, Island Song speaks of the moral complexities of war-time allegiances, the psychological toll of living with the enemy and the messy reality of human relationships in a tightly knit community. As Roz discovers, truth is hard to pin down, and so are the rights and wrongs of those struggling to survive in the most difficult of circumstances.

Madeleine Bunting was for many years a columnist for the Guardian, which she joined in 1990. Bunting read History at Cambridge and Politics at Harvard. She is the author of many non-fiction books, including The Plot: A Biography of My Father's English Acre, which won the Portico Prize, and Love of Country: A Hebridean Journey, which was shortlisted for the Wainwright Golden Beer Book Prize and the Saltire Non-Fiction Book of the Year. She has also written a novel, Island Song. She lives in London.

A striking first novel that explores the moral complexities of occupation during the second world war
Observer - Anthony Quinn

It's rare to find a first novel that is so assured and so well-balanced ... it is the best sort of intelligent popular fiction... Page-turning
Scotsman - Allan Massie

Elegant...unflinching
Daily Mail

A wonderful evocation of wartime secrets and hidden histories, and a moving exploration of the far-reaching consequences they can have
Catherine Hall

Compelling and moving - the narrative carried me along. I was gripped by Madeleine Bunting's cast of wartime characters and their modern-day descendants until the very last page
Catherine Hall

Psychologically taut and compelling. A fascinating depiction of wartime Guernsey, with very real, very moving characters
Catherine Hall

A gripping and exceptionally well told story about one woman's quest for truth, illuminating the many ways in which emotional and political histories are so often intricately
Melissa Benn

Vivid and engrossing, Island Song tells an extraordinary story, bringing to life a largely untold experience of the Second World War. Madeleine Bunting is a fine writer, and her beautiful novel a memorable debut.
Claire Messud

A page-turner...many pages are so good, even charming, that you want to linger on them...it's rare to find a first novel that is so assured and well-balanced
Yorkshire Post