Many will know this writer from his Booker Prize winning novel “The English Patient” and many have seen the movie even if they did not read the book.

“Warlight” takes place mostly just after WWII but is a totally different angle than any other WWII novel I have read. The scene is England, actually London and locales nearby. Two teenagers, a brother and sister, have their seemingly ordinary life totally upended when their parents announce they are leaving them with the man who lives in rooms at the top of their house. The two teens refer to this man as The Moth. The teens, Nathanial and Rachel, begin to think The Moth and his friends may be criminals given their strange goings and comings. They still go to school. Nathanial finds some jobs via The Moth and meets a girl at one of them. Her brother is in real estate. Nathanial and she hang out and have adventures in the empty for sale houses. The brother and sister do discover that their mother worked with The Moth during the war. Otherwise, they know little.

Eventually, their mother returns with no explaining about where she was or what she was doing. They never see their father again and have no clue what happened to him. Rachel is so angry about this that she has little to do with the mother and only sees Nathanial occasionally. Years later Nathaniel acquires a job where he is able to discover who his mother really is, what she had been doing for years, and what happened to her and others with whom she was close.

This novel reveals how little we sometimes know about others, the effects of their secrets, and how behavior good or bad leads to consequences often unexpected.

I’ve read several of the author’s novels and always find them complex and enlightening, sometimes revealing worlds about which I have little or no knowledge.