World War II is always a painful subject to tackle and in her debut novel, 22 Britannia Road, Amanda Hodgkinson doesn’t shy away. She writes not only about the terrors of war and secrets people hold once it’s over, but also has a frank and open look at what it means to be a family, a husband, a wife and a child of parents who are at their core, only human.

Silvanna is a Polish refugee fleeing a past that still wakes her in the night screaming. Arriving in England with her six-year-old son Aurek, they are met by her husband (Aurek’s father), Janusz. At first, we don’t know how Janusz made it from Poland to England, or how he has managed to set up a whole new life for them, but welcoming his lost wife and child, they desperately try to settle down and blend into the English way of life.

The story continually jumps between Janusz’s point of view and Silvanna’s, with an occasional glimpse into Aurek’s, never dwelling long in either the past or the present. Their disjointed history –and now this painful togetherness – highlights how secrets can destroy a family. The reader can see how each character is torn apart by memories of home, their early marriage and the war years, where their experiences are so different and yet similar, to the present-day, where they can’t let go. And the child Aurek who just wishes ‘the enemy’ (Janusz) would disappear and leave him and his mother to return to the wild woods where he feels most at home. The question throughout is: do these people have enough spirit left to hold themselves together, or will their new life shatter and fall once these secrets are revealed?

Kate Rockstrom is from Readings Carlton