The Girl Who Fell From the Sky

by Simon Mawer

This book is by the author of the Glass Room and Mendel' Dwarf.  I found both of these books incredible.
I read a review of this book recently and the reviewer was disappointed in this book, compared to the Glass Room.  I have to agree that this book wasn't as good as the Glass Room or Mendel's Dwarf in terms of the power of the story.  However, it was still a good book.

This book is the story of a British girl, who is fluent in French, who is recruited to be an agent of the Special Operations Executive, working in France, during WWII.  She is put through a variety of tests, physical and mental and receives training in escape, radio operations, weapons etc.  She travels to France and works with the French resistance carrying messages, helping to arrange delivery of goods into France.

While she is performing her duties she is also pining over two men, a new one she has met and an old flame, a physicist, that she is trying to convince to leave for England to work for the allies on the development of an atomic bomb.

She also gets involved with trying to get a fellow agent out of France.  However, she finds that she has been betrayed, by a person she thought her friend.  She has the opportunity to leave for England as there is a price on her head... but she decides to stay to continue her work.  Perhaps she was too confident in her self, to sure of herself.  As with his other books there is a dramatic, shocking ending.

It was an interesting thriller, it raised issues of loyalty, how different people cope with war/invasion, is it okay to keep your head down or even comply with the "enemy"? Some people don't think about why they are doing dangerous things, they just do them.  It makes you ask yourself how you think you would behave if in that situation.