I have never read any Deborah Swift before, and I plan to quickly remedy that! This book is perfect for those looking for more WWII fiction, and that want a more character-driven story with romance than a history lesson (although its clear the author did her research). It also is unique in that the plot deals with after the war, when family members came home and how that affected relationships after being separated. Really enjoyed this one!

It’s confession time. I’ve never seen Brief Encounter.

It was on telly over Christmas, as it happens, and I ignored it in favour of a book -- something that turned out to be a mistake on two counts. The first was that the book I chose wasn’t great (I didn’t bother reviewing it so don’t ask me what it was) and the second was that if I’d watched it, Deborah Swift’s Past Encounters, one of whose plot lines is the making of the film, might have meant a bit more to me.

But it doesn’t matter. Even for a Brief Encounters virgin, Past Encounters was a fabulous, uplifting read. It tells the stories of Peter and Rhonda, trapped in a childless and unhappy ten-year marriage, and how Rhonda uncovers the horrors of Peter’s wartime story while coming to terms with her own lost love. You don’t need to know the original Encounter. Swift’s book stands up just fine on its own.

From beginning to end, I loved it. When Peter is taken prisoner early in the war Rhonda, not knowing if he’s alive or dead, finds herself trapped in an over-hasty engagement from which she fears she may never be released. Working extra shifts as a caterer on the set of Brief Encounter (filmed in Carnforth) she falls in love with Matthew, one of the production managers. It’s no spoiler to say that this romance ends unhappily with Matthew’s untimely death, because the real story is how her marriage to Peter unravels and how the discovery of his many secrets changes both their lives.

The period detail is terrific, the characterisation realistic, and the story itself by turns harrowing and poignant. Swift doesn’t shrink from showing the darker sides of human nature, but the book is, ultimately, uplifting. A wonderful read.

Thanks to Netgalley and Sapere Books for a copy of this book, in return for an honest review.

Rhoda and Peter are drifting apart. Engaged before Peter enlisted in army, they were separated for six years while World War II raged in Europe. For Peter, the war was a body-crushing and soul-crushing event. Captured almost immediately by the Germans, he spent years in a prisoner work camp, reduced to skin and bone, witnessing and carrying out unthinkable acts in the struggle for survival. While in the camp, he made friends with Archie, a terrified boy just turned seventeen. Together, the two of them form a friendship that can only be born from the horrors they both experience. After the war the friendship continues as Peter meets regularly with Archie and Archie's wife Helen to relive that part of their lives which civilians (and especially Rhoda) will never understand. 

For Rhoda, the war was a grayness that took over her whole world. Her downtrodden mother, rebellious brother, and tyrannical father leave her little to look forward to at home. The impossibility of marrying and having children of her own gives her no chance to escape her circumstances. With letters delayed or missing, she begins to wonder if she ever really loved Peter? At the same time, she also feels the crushing burden of guilt for this betrayal--what kind of woman abandons a fiance who is suffering in POW camp? When a film company comes to their little town in the north of England, Rhoda works as a waitress for the cast and crew, meeting a charismatic location scout named Matthew. She's been wearing Peter's engagement ring for five years now...but is the slim possibility of him being still alive reason enough to halt her budding romance with Matthew?

Alternating between two timelines--the war years and ten years in the future--this book explores what it is that brings two people together, what it means to drift apart, and whether a chasm cut between two souls can ever be bridged.

I am an avid reader of Deborah Swift's books. Her novel Divided Inheritance, set in seventeenth century England and Spain, pulled me in with its descriptions, its characters, and its superbly balanced plot. This book, Past Encounters, was a much slower start for me. Part of it might have been that I am a little ho-hum about World War II fiction. Another part might have been that the beginning of the novel was somewhat unclear and meandering, although it did certainly leave enough clues to intrigue me. I wasn't really sure, initially, where the story was taking me, but by the middle of the book, I was hooked, and by the last quarter I was glued to the page. The tragic grandeur of two ordinary people approaching middle age, shackled by the past and haunted in the present, had the surprising ability to keep me fully on tenterhooks. 

After finishing the book, I was interested to learn that the film being made in the novel was an actual movie released in 1945 called Brief Encounter. Some of the plot points in the book echo the plot of the 1945 film, woven in with Deborah Swift's typical artistic skill.

If you have the patience to let this character study percolate for a bit, you will enjoy one of the finest evocations I have encountered of what World War II meant for those who fought in it and those who stayed at home. Recommended.

Disclosure: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. All opinions expressed in this review are my own.

This is really a 3.5 star review. The book was fairly good but at one point I started wondering what it was really about and what the author was trying to convey. Rhoda was the main character. She lived at home with her parents and brother. They were rather poor and her Father was a rough and tough man. Her Mother was a hard worker that took some verbal and mental abuse from her husband. Rhoda’s brother was an unruly teen that didn’t want to go to school or do chores at home. Rhoda met Peter, who was quite a bit older than her and joined the in fighting against the Nazis in WWII. I don’t want to give away any spoilers so I’ll just say these characters lived a hard life and didn’t always make the best decisions. I’m not judging them but it kinda turned me away from this book. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me to read an advance copy for my honest review.