A classic

Perhaps my most venal reading sin is spending so much time trying to get my hands on the latest and greatest. I'm so busy chasing 2007 that I've already forgotten 2006. Publishers like Persephone books remind us that the past has much to offer.

They have republished Little Boy Lost, which sounds like a dated melodrama, but is far from it. The story is set in post-war France and centers on a priggish British intellectual. He escaped the Nazis when they overran France, but his wife and newborn son did not. Now after the war, he learns his son may have survived. He then travels to France to see if in fact the boy is his lost son. Sounds as treacly as Christmas Shoes, but let me assure you it is not. Instead we have a man wrestling against his worse nature and a view of the desolation of France in 1945. The intensity of the novel will surprise you. Seek this one out, Amazon has some used copies. To learn more, read this review in the Spectator.