COVENTRY by Helen Humphreys

Harriet Marsh is a fire-watcher, standing on the roof of Coventry Cathedral on November 14, 1940. Twenty-two years earlier, she had said farewell to Owen, her husband of two days, who left to fight in WWI and was killed.  This book- only 175 pages long - tells the story of the bombing blitz that hit Coventry that night and nearly destroyed the whole city. Along with Harriet on that roof is a young fire-watcher named Jeremy, who lives with his mother, Maeve, a painter, and the book tells the story of how these three people endured that night, and how their lives were intertwined by love, loss and remembrance.

The book is beautifully written, and every sentence has meaning.  At one point, Harriet is taking refuge in a field ,is reminded of a Russian story in which a horse suddenly appears, when she sees a donkey before her: "The good thing about books is that they remain themselves. What happens in their pages stays there. Harriet does not like the idea of the story bleeding through into real life. She trusts a story and doesn't trust real life.  But what makes her trust a story is the knowledge that it will stay where it is. that she can visit it but that there is no chance it will visit her."