Books On Tour (Review): The Outcast Girls by Shirley Dickson

Being on the historical fiction kick I have been on lately, I was looking forward to reading this book. I thought the premise of two girls from disparate backgrounds meeting and forming in a friendship amidst the horrors of WWII sounded intriguing.

There were indeed several engaging moments throughout the novel, but overall I felt that the author just skimmed the surface and could have gone a lot deeper into the girls’ experiences. The concept of their meeting as Land Girls is interesting, as I didn’t know much about the program.

Getting to that point, however, was a little rough. The first chapter addresses the need to spirit Jewish children out of Berlin in the wake of Kristallnacht, and the trip made by Frieda and her brother Kurt to escape. That grabbed me right away. But then the author left them to introduce Sandra five years later (1943).

By the time we get back to Frieda in chapter six, it is also 1943, and her experiences of the previous five years are narrative, not action. I found this to be jarring because there were three chapters of Sandra and only one of Frieda to set everything up. It seemed unbalanced as if the author didn’t know where the heft of the story was.

This was my thought throughout the rest of the book as well. I did think it evened out some once the girls “met” in the program, and I was interested as their friendship grew, but the rest of the novel felt like a basic war story of love and loss. I do think the author did convey the dread and then agony felt by families when they received telegrams, and I liked how the girls bonded over their shared experiences.

All in all, this was a decent book but didn’t have as much depth as I would have liked, and I think that could have come at the beginning to set up the dire need to get children to safety out of Germany. It might have set a different tone. That being said, I did learn more about the Land Girls, though, and if I learn something new from a book, it’s a win for me!

AUTHOR BIO

Shirley Dickson was born and grew up in the seaside town of South Shields. She left school at fifteen and can’t remember a time when she didn’t write. She entered her first short story competition in ‘School Friend’ when she was eleven. After Shirley retired from auxiliary nursing, she was able to devote her time to writing. After living in various locations, she settled under the big skies of Northumberland and has lived with her husband in the same house for over forty years. Shirley has three daughters and four grandchildren and likes nothing better than family gatherings.