History and Mystery Reads

Rating: 7/10

• Accuracy: Extensive, with real figures and events rendered carefully and supplemented by a fictional German general’s commentary on the war.
• Readability: Clear and engaging, but very long.
• Plot: An American naval officer and his family are swept across Europe and the Pacific from 1939 to Pearl Harbor.

Victor “Pug” Henry is a US naval officer posted to Berlin as attaché in 1939. His position gives him access to Hitler, Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin. Meanwhile his family scatters. His son Byron falls in love with Natalie Jastrow, a Jewish American woman whose uncle, a famous writer, lives in Italy. His wife Rhoda is restless. Another son, Warren, is a naval aviator.

Herman Wouk’s plan was to write a panoramic novel of the Second World War through one family. The Winds of War covers the period before America’s entry, ending with Pearl Harbor, and its sequel War and Remembrance continues to the end.

The novel’s strength is scope. Pug’s travels allow Wouk to depict the war’s major events and personalities, and the scenes with historical figures are well researched. The inclusion of passages from a fictional German general’s history adds context.

The weaknesses are characterisation and romance. The family members are often conventional, and the love stories can be soap-operatic. The dialogue with historical figures sometimes sounds like a history lesson.

The book is also long, and readers may tire of the global tour.

The 7 reflects a well-researched and accessible history in novel form. It became a major television miniseries in 1983, and it remains a good introduction to the war for general readers, though it lacks the depth of great war fiction.