Waiting. Always.

The Last Christmas by Liz Fenwick is a very charming dual timeline novel that I absolutely adored.

Readers of the author’s The Secret Shore will remember lead character Meredith Tremayne who features in this book as the ninety-eight-year-old grandmother. She is returning to Cornwall for one last Christmas.

The novel is set in 2012 and 1946, both in December. In 1946 Meredith married Jake, the love of her life. In 2012 Meredith is returning to scatter Jake’s ashes after he had died eight years earlier. Her dearest wish is that her ashes would be scattered with his.

Meredith was a cartographer during World War II, and was crucial to the war effort. However, “when the war ended, they basically told us to hang up our coats and go back to the kitchen.” With war, came choices, after the war, Meredith still pursued her work with the blessing of new husband, Jake.

The pair settled in Massachusetts. It is only in 2012 that Meredith returns ‘home’ to Cornwall with her granddaughter Grace. “My grandmother had been important in the war effort, but no-one in the family ever said anything about it.” Here, in Cornwall, Grace really gets to ‘know’ her grandmother, who in turn, really ‘sees’ Grace.

Grace is dyslexic and has been dubbed ‘stupid’ by her own mother. It is in visiting her grandmother’s family home that Grace really discovers her passion and her gifting. She finally finds her place in life.

War changes people. “Everyone of us who lived through that time carried things which… could sink us. We had to find a way of living with what we had witnessed or experienced.” There were horrors that they could not ‘unsee’. They had to learn to live with them. After the war, “I needed to make every moment count.”