Review:
'Superb. Absorbing, suspenseful and with a beautifully poetic touch' --Nathan Filer, author of the Costa Book of the Year 2013, The Shock of the Fall
'An effective psychological drama between two extraordinary characters. Claustrophobic, touching, character-driven and told in lovely prose...Readers who loved The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas will have a strong affinity with The Dynamite Room' --Katie Ward, author of Girl Reading
'Clever and unsettling, this most unconventional of war stories had me totally gripped' --Shelley Harris, author of Jubilee
'Deeply thought provoking... Claustrophobic, tense and thoughtful' --The Lady
'Suspenseful and powerful. A novel of great humanity that exposes the absurd contradictions of war' --Samantha Harvey, author of The Wilderness
'Ambitious and often gripping...Hewitt has a strong sense of narrative pace and brings a strange poetry to his depiction of an exhausted and empty world... tense and dramatic' --Observer
'With its unshowy, confident prose, this novel is accomplished, resonant and surprising, and poses some delicately handled questions about whether redemption is possible' -- --Guardian
A Suffolk schoolgirl's world is turned upside-down by the arrival of a Nazi agent in Jason Hewitt's tense and pacy debut... Ambitious and often gripping.. Hewitt has a strong sense of narrative pace and brings a strange poetry to his depiction of an exhausted and empty world...A tense and dramatic climax a fitting end to a very promising first novel.
Observer
With its unshowy, confident prose, this novel is accomplished, resonant and surprising, and poses some delicately handled questions about whether redemption is possible, and at what point a good heart becomes forever besmirched
Guardian
Whilst this nuanced mystery is obviously fictional, Hewitt s research enriches a claustrophobic and formidable first novel that builds to a devastating climax
Metro
Debut Novelists to Watch Out For.. Summer, 1940. Lydia is 11, an evacuee in a gas mask, trudging alone up a deserted main road. Heiden is a German officer, washed up on the Suffolk Coast. Hidden in a boarded up house, the soldier keeps the girl hostage, their two stories slowly emerging in tandem as the bond between them grows. There are no happy endings with this book. But, as Hewitt movingly evokes, both are lost, just trying to find their way home
Harpers Bazaar
Book of the Week....Two characters are brought together in the circumstance of war in this compelling and descriptive novel.. What I loved about this book was the descriptive narrative. You really feel like you are there, shut up in the house with both of them. The temperament of the two characters is excellently conveyed in simple actions. The deserted house is beautifully described; brought to life by the girl s memories of what was there before her father s vegetable patch now dry and unyielding, the wardrobe that held her mother s clothes lying empty.
We Love This Book
Deeply thought provoking.. Hewitt superbly conveys the contrasting elements of tension and friendship in the relationship between captor and captive between a vulnerable child and an adult in a position of power. Claustrophobic, tense and thoughtful.' --The Lady
About the Author:
Jason Hewitt is a novelist, playwright and actor. He was born in Oxford, and lives in London. He is the author of The Dynamite Room and Devastation Road.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.