Tightrope, by Simon Mawer

It’s only a day or two since I read Simon Mawer’s The Girl Who Fell from the Sky (see my review) but I liked it so much I went straight to the newly published sequel Tightropeand finished it this morning.

The novel opens many years after the end of the war when Marion Sutro is an elderly woman meeting up again with Sam Wareham, twenty years her junior and still somewhat star-struck by this enigmatic heroine of WW2.  This opening enables Mawer to fill in the backstory so that Tightrope can be read independently of The Girl Who Fell from the Sky which covers her exploits for the British in Occupied France.  The action of the novel then returns to the last year of the war after Marion has escaped from Nazi captivity in Ravensbrück and her journey of physical and mental recovery from torture and trauma.

This novel is not as engaging…