The Whalebone Theatre, Quinn - B

                     Cristabel Seagrave, an engaging, charming, and witty young lady, grows up on the south coast of England in the years after WWI. She leads a household of children consisting of a half-sister, born to her dad and step-mother, and a cousin, born to her step-mother and her father's younger brother, after her father's untimely demise. Her own mother died in childbirth. Along with her half-sister and her cousin, they traipse far and wide as the grown ups party and ignore them. Theirs is a world of fantasy, and endless escapades all orchestrated by Cristabel. Her imagination is unlimited and when, in her twelfth year, a whale carcass comes ashore on their beach, Cristabel claims it as her property. She writes the king to advise him, but he fails to respond. She produces a play of the Iliad set in the bones of the whale to the acclaim of the community. She follows with The Tempest. With the help of a visiting Russian painter and local craftsmen, the whale bones are converted into an actual theatre. The theatre flourishes and each summer throughout the 1930's, the Seagrave children put on a show. Cristabel produces, directs and performs, while Flossie, her half-sister, and Digby, her cousin, perform.

                  When war comes, Digby leaves Cambridge and enlists in the army. Cristabel joins the WAAF. Because she is fluent in German and French, she is soon promoted and working at HQ. Flossie goes to work for the Land Army and leaves the family's estate. As 1942 closes, Digby is with the SOE and operating in France. Bored to tears, Cristabel asks a family friend to get her something more interesting. She, too, is soon training for the SOE. In June of 1943, Cristabel parachutes into occupied France. She finds freedom in the unrelenting pace, and purpose in the life of a courier. She stays constantly on the go, never sleeps in the same place twice. By the fall, her radio operator is captured and she returns to London. She learns that Digby's circuit has been rolled up by the Gestapo and no one knows where he is. Thus, he comes under suspicion, and Cristabel is also tainted in the eyes of the SOE. She returns home with nothing to do. In the spring, she is back in their good graces and is off to Normandy. When the Americans arrive, she volunteers to translate and they send her to Paris to gather intelligence. She finds Digby living with a Frenchman and totally opposed to the UK. He feels the SOE willfully sacrificed him and his men, and he does not plan to return home when the war is over. In the fighting just before the American arrival, Digby is killed. Upon her return home, she and Flossie take in tenants, and re-open the theatre.

                  The first half of this novel is extraordinary. It is as fine a tale of childhood that one can come across. However, it stumbles when the war comes. The saving grace of the second half is that it expertly discusses the travails of the moneyed aristocracy of England during the war.