Click on the Bristol Grammar School crest to visit our main School Website

Home | Welcome | Shortlist | BGS Reviews | Contact us

Tamar

Reviewed by Tom Storvik
“In the end it was her grandfather, William Hyde who gave the unborn child her name. He was serious about names; he’d had several himself.”

Tamar is dreadfully disgustingly horribly horrible … until page 200 when you get launched into a world of secrecy, lies and adventure.

Tamar, William Hyde and Ernst Lubbers are all one man, an SOE agent in the Dutch revolution, 1944 and 1945. He is working with another man, named Dart.

The part about the war is the most boring thing in the world and no child in their right mind could possibly care much. However it is a different matter in the young Tamar’s story. She was born in the late 80s or early 90s,but she is the grand daughter of the lately-deceased William Hyde and was left a box with 1944 pounds and a map following the river Tamar.

Overall I would give this 430-page book 3/10 as it was not for anyone who wasn’t around in World War Two, or at least knows a lot about it; it didn’t keep me hooked at all.