Postcards from No-Man's Land by Aidan Chambers

This was an easier read than I expected, to the point where I kept wondering if it was actually designed to be YA. So I checked out the Wiki on the author, and found that it is indeed written for Young Adults (read "teenagers").

I did expect (based on the title) a story about the war. It really isn't, although one of the story lines takes place during a specific allied action in the Netherlands, the war is never the focus of the story. The author describes some of the action and talks about the Year of Hunger which followed the Allied liberation of the country, but it seems somehow remote even from the direct narrative in the period.

It is fundamentally a romance. Two women love the same man, Sarah, the pregnant wife back home in England, the other, Geertrui, the Dutch girl who nurses him in hiding during the campaign. The author does have a problem - he has to get the man well enough to impregnate the Dutch girl - but he still has to kill him, because they can't both have him. As a character, the war-era Jacob is functionally voiceless. The two women are the characters. Sarah we know through her grandson, Jacob, who is sent to attend the anniversary memorial to the liberators of the Netherlands. Geertrui actually tells most of her own story in first person. I do think Jacob's heart attack was a bit cheesy, not to mention the opportune return of Geertrui's old boyfriend - and his willingness to marry her and raise her child as his own.

The writer seems to carefully raise "issues" to titilate the youthful reader, such as assisted suicide (legal in the Netherlands) and the relaxed attitude toward homosexuality there, particularly in Amsterdam, and for modern-era Jacob to deal with. He does steer clear of the legal prostitution. Although, actually, young Jacob never really deals with them - he is simply exposed to them.

To summarize, I found it somewhat unsatisfying - perhaps because it was quite predictable - or because it softened all the edges so much. I have to read a "grown-up" book or two next.