I love a book that educates me without feeling I'm being educated. No Traveller Returns taught me more about social and political issues in France after the German occupation and about the founding of the State of Israel than I ever learned during my formal education.

The narrative is written in the first person as we get to know Marie, a French woman who was born and brought up in the countryside of Les Landes in southern France.

Her story begins with a prologue, shortly after she has been bereaved of the love of her life. We are not told who he is, at what stage in their lives his death has occurred, or how it has happened, which piqued my curiosity and made me eager to find out.

We are transported back to Marie's unhappy childhood, as the only child of a loveless marriage. When she begins school at the age of six her inner world begins to be transformed through her relationships with her inspirational teacher, with her new friend, Alain, and with books and learning.

As a child Marie's thoughts are focussed on herself and her lot (as I guess is the case for most of us). She begins to be more interested in life outside her own small sphere following the German invasion and the establishment of the Vichy Government - to the extent that she becomes actively involved in The Resistance, a move which impacts the path her life subsequently takes.

It's a delight to watch Marie's character develop over the years, shaped by her experiences working as a journalist, as her work takes her to Russia, Indochina and Algeria - places where she witnesses hardship and brutality, but also encounters life-changing love.

The first page made me wonder what I had picked up, the language didn’t really flow and I thought I had a hard slog ahead of me. But already by Chapter 2 I was sitting up, eagerly turning the pages ready to find out more about this young French farm girl in the 1930s, her bully of a mother and a father who she could never please.

I enjoyed the point of view, the character of Marie, a naive bookish young girl, navigates the difficult times of occupation. As her mother keeps her in the dark with current affairs, she learns the state of affairs on her own, those around her teaching her their perspective from their Jewish, catholic or communist views and then later, from the patrons in the local bar where she worked.

Before long Marie finds herself helping Jews escape from Nazi occupied France into Spain and working for the resistance, and then impersonating a novice Catholic Nun and smuggling young Jewish children over the border.

When her closest friend is shot by the Germans and his family is sent to Auschwitz, I was disappointed in how it was skimmed over in the book. I was dealt with in just a paragraph and while it was a turning point for Marie, it didn’t seem to be given much time or emotion.

After the war, the story moves to follow Marie’s career in Paris as a journalist, taking her as far as Soviet Russia as she follows the lives of orphaned Jews.

I had never come across the Jewish practice of not writing God’s name in entirety before - choosing G-d instead “Ah well - G-d - that would really help, having him on your side!” The Torah prohibits erasing, destroying or desecration of God’s name and by writing it in this way, it allows for publications, emails, web posts etc to be changed or erased.

The story slowed for me in the middle section of the book, I enjoyed the first third a lot, but after the war, when Marie goes on assignment to Russia, the book seems to come to a halt and it never really picks up pace again. Marie, in her journalistic capacity, follows the path of Jews and Communists through France and Algeria and again I find it all a little too “documentary” rather than true story telling.