Kirjahaku

'If you don't know, I don't know...' 'Things not discussed can never be recorded and therefore have never taken place.' Those were the last words Michael Butler said to his younger son, Jeff, on a Saturday evening in August before Jeff left on holiday. Jeff could not have imagined that events would unravel so fast from there, starting with the suicide of his father by hanging in their garage later that night and leading to a surprising trip to Hungary, where his father had been working for an international organisation and had become involved in investigating the trafficking of Roma girls into the sex trade. As far as Jeff was concerned, the act of suicide causes such indescribable pain for those left behind that for anyone to even contemplate the act was inexcusable. An act of love betrayed. But was his father really responsible for taking his own life?

Brian Stewart is a respected professional man, liked by his colleagues and friends and loved by his wife Marcia and their two young children. He has never been the kind of man who would lose his sense of propriety or do anything on an impulse. Until, that is, the day he starts to go off the rails. Alarmed at the change in her husband, Marcia is horrified to discover that he has incurred tens of thousands of pounds in debts after starting to gamble compulsively. Soon afterwards, he is arrested for alleged sexual offences, including rape. Marcia stands by Brian but is unable to understand or explain this profound change in her husband's behaviour. Surely, he is not in his right mind. But what sort of affliction could lead to such serious loss of control over his basic impulses?

Gwendoline was brought up in the flat above her father's shoe shop, one of eleven children. As a girl, she always had a desire to train as a nurse, but with her father adamantly against it, she was forced to wait until she was twenty-one to leave home. After completing her training and falling in love with her beloved Roy, Gwendoline was faced with the chaos of World War Two, the trials and tribulations of raising a family, and the harsh reality of living with severe depression. Based on a true story, Gwendoline explores the challenges facing women in the 1900s, the struggles confronted by individuals suffering from mental health issues, and the devastating impact these issues can have on their families.

The story of a young Hungarian woman Eszter and her baby Eva who, by an extraordinary twist of fate, escape the horror of the mass murders being committed within the Birkenau extermination camp in WW2 as they are about to enter there. And of the lives they live following this reprieve. The SS guard who allowed them to escape, Peter Leahy, falls in love with Eszter and goes to find her in war-torn Budapest. They are separated again by the return of Eszter's husband, but never lose their love for one another, living the rest of their lives unaware of the other's continued feelings. After fleeing the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956, Eva grows into a famous medical researcher into eye disease and eventually uncovers the sad truth that her mother Eszter and Peter both lived out their lives regretting their lost love of each other, before she too dies at the age of seventy after becoming blind. 'You may consider me naïve', the author asked himself, after having been very moved by his visit to the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial, 'but what if one, just one, of the prisoners who arrived on the death train had had the chance to escape? What would they have made of the life this reprieve had given them?'