Unexploded

by Alison Macleod
This book is set in Brighton during the second world war and tells the tale of a small family falling apart as the husband takes on additional responsibilities for the war and his wife first distrusts him and then falls for a german artist who is held in a detention camp at the foot of the downs. Her husband is the senior civilian at the camp.
She makes it clear that this is fiction and that she has didtorted the truth to fit her fictional narrative. This did not stop Adam Mars Jones slaughtering the book for its factual innaccuracies in LRB recently. I do not understand this response. It reminds me of people getting upset with the Da Vinci Code for making things up. Hello, the clue is in the genre-this is fiction. I don't read novels for historical facts but for the escape into a good yarn. This book was not great but it was a good story. I would give it a thums up 6/10