June Attwell is a young woman when the War breaks out. Growing up in Norfolk, her best friend has been Alec Oswin, a lad sent home from India as a child when cholera wrecked his family. THE STARS WE SHARE shows what the two young people have in common, and stand to lose each day of their trials.
These days it’s trendy to involve war work at Bletchley Park, where mathematician June works under great secrecy. Creditably however, the author Rafe Posey, a man presenting us with his first novel, investigates how these brilliant, essential female workers felt when the war ended and they were told to return to housekeeping. Alec has had one heck of a bad war. He corresponded with June, his fiancée, through the Battle of Britain, and his continued service as an RAF pilot. He could tell June almost everything, except the worst of his memories. And June had to keep lying to him that she was safe near London, doing secretarial work, though the reality was very different. After the war ends, the men will need their jobs back. Is there a place for women with so much more to contribute?
The story is lengthy, and has a literary feel, establishing character by demonstrations and memories, but not calling upon poets too often. We can see and hear the nature of the countryside, feel the shock of a bombed building in ruins, enjoy the charm of a homey Christmas or an exotic culture. The characters explore a few different countries, separately or in tandem. Some readers may feel this slows down the action, but then, the mid-century world tearing lives apart and rebuilding them is really the action. Some women will identify with June and some not at all. She is the classic woman trying to have it all, bar fame and fortune. Men are given many opportunities to realise their talent, but women with similar training and aptitude are often expected to go home and bake a sponge cake, and be satisfied. Few examples existed for June to follow. Today’s young computer experts should consider the pathfinders, the women who made their lives possible, and the men who encouraged them.
THE STARS WE SHARE is a mainly gentle read and a realistic romance, for the day. Some scenes are harrowing reminders of what people endured, but the first-person narration is sufficiently different to other wartime novels to keep my focus on June and Alec’s determination to win.
Alec and June meet in a small English town in 1927 when they are children. Alec has lost his parents in India to cholera; he's a dreamy, thoughtful child who maps the stars and invents magical stories. June is a gifted young mathematician, memorizing train timetables and studying equations. They grow close, and their love feels inevitable, until war separates them. Alec becomes an RAF pilot; June, a codebreaker at Bletchley Park, which means keeping the important work she does a secret from Alec forever. Though they're separated for years at a time, they share the certainty that their love will endure.
But when they're reunited after the war, they return deeply changed by their experiences, each with different expectations and hopes for the future. The couple must decide how much of themselves to reveal to the one they love, which dreams can be sacrificed, and which secrets are too big to bear alone.
The Stars We Share is a poignant, heart-wrenching novel that asks readers to think deeply about the decisions and deceptions--small and large--that make a life and a love worth having.
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