Then (Once/Now/Then/After)

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Isobel has survived the event, simply described only as an unseasonably hot day that after a flash of light turns the world cold, and is sheltering in an office building with a man, and three teenagers. Having lost her memory, and continuing to have some kind of amnesia, she initially has no recollection of the event, or even of what has occurred just hours before. She is not particularly likable as a character, mainly because she has no memories to form a personality, likes or dislikes, and as she cannot remember nor really even distinguish between dreams and reality, she has an almost ghost-like quality. Everyone keeps saying how gripping this book is, how disturbing, how powerful but I don't quite feel this the same way. It's not so gripping that I can't put it down but it IS fascinating. It's not so disturbing that I feel upset by it - for apocalypses it's good but also a bit tame; they're cold but not freezing, they're hungry but not driven to cannibalism, their world is falling apart yet there is a lot less chaos and brutality than I would expect. Pardon the pun but for an apocalypse it's a bit cold and distracted. The fourth installment in Morris Gleitzman's unforgettable series beginning with Once, tells the story of what happened to Felix in the final, agonising stages of the Second World War. In the next valley there might be a house,’ I say. ‘With a really kind cook. Who’s made too much dinner and who’s looking for people to help eat the extra platefuls of delicious stew.’

The writing style itself is quite difficult to get used to - it's quite bleak and time shimmers between the past and the present from paragraph to paragraph - this is a book that I had to pay real attention to, otherwise I would have been constantly lost. Then opens with Felix and Zelda running for their lives from a train taking them to a concentration camp. Both orphaned children, first seen in Once, know that if they fall into the hands of the Nazis again they will be killed. There’s a difficult balance here for a children’s author. My rule is that I don’t want to fudge, trivialize or evade how things were and are, but at the same time I don’t ever want to write a book that leaves young readers feeling worse about themselves and their world. A very difficult balance, which is why Once and Then took me years to write. The noise of the train is very loud now. Any second it’ll be coming round the bend below us. I wish we had ferns to hide under. Near us is a rabbit hole. I wish me and Zelda were rabbits. We could crouch deep in the hillside and eat carrots. And that is what makes this a truly brilliant bit of writing - the fact that it can draw these feelings, these questions, out of me - the fact that it can make me think about what all this is REALLY about...Her insider account is an enjoyable read. It offers a colourful peek into the world of summits and high-level negotiations. She played a key role in two diplomatic successes: an accord between Belgrade and Pristina over the functioning of northern Kosovo; and a EU-US-led deal whereby Iran abandoned its illicit nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief. These were hard-won victories, akin, she suggests, to assembling a fiendish “jigsaw puzzle”. By the time a deal is reached, she had devoted more time to Tehran ‘than to my family’ The forest is too far. We won’t get there in time. If the Nazis see us on this hillside we’ll be easy targets. My shirt’s got rips in it that are flapping all over the place. Zelda’s dress is lots of colours but not camouflage ones.

Years ago I read about a bloke called Janusz Korczak, a Polish Jewish children’s doctor and children’s author who helped look after two hundred orphans in the second world war and along the way did some of the best things I’ve ever heard of a person doing. The Nazis killed the orphans, and Korczak chose to stay with them and was killed too. His life was one of the most inspiring examples I’d come across of the best surrounded by the worst. I wanted to honour his spirit in a story. This is an interesting book that considers the lived experience in a post-apocalyptic London. With all of the current talk of nuclear exchanges between Russia and NATO, it somehow seemed appropriate to give some thought to what that might mean to those on the receiving end. We know that something bad has happened, but we aren't told exactly what. Told with heart and humour, Then offers a unique perspective on one of the darkest chapters in history and serves as a reminder of the resilience and hope that can be found even in the most dire of circumstances.Lccn 2009050774 Ocr_converted abbyy-to-hocr 1.1.20 Ocr_module_version 0.0.17 Old_pallet IA14988 Openlibrary_edition Out of all this grew the story of a ten year old Jewish boy in Poland in 1942 and his six year old Polish friend. Two books so far, Once and Then, with a third to come. The incidents in them are made-up, but most of Felix and Zelda’s experiences are inspired by the real-life experiences of children in the Holocaust. As best I could imagine them. I wasn’t there, so all I could do was read and listen carefully, and try to imagine. Some parts of the story suggest a form of dirty bomb near Liverpool Street in London. Other parts suggest some form of asteroid strike or possibly the consequence of some form of solar activity. What we do know is that, in February, things get extremely hot, and then they freeze. The reader isn't helped by an absence of timescale to all of this. The narrative could cover a period of months or days. It equally could be a much shorter period of, say, an afternoon. All we do know is that there is a period in which and already traumatised woman is traumatised further. Sequel to the searing Once . . ., this tale of young people trying to survive in Poland during World War II is equally powerful.'