Private Peaceful

The front cover of private peaceful symbolises the storyline. There are 2 butterflies in bight primary colours, showing a sense of hope amidst a background of dull war. Also there is a blue sky that says war is not only at night, in the dark-it’s all day.

The blurb has 2 main sections, a piece of speech and the story line. It gives you an impression about what this book is about. It reveals that it’s about time running out and death being imminent. The opening pages start with showing the way the story is told. It is about a man who wants to tell his life story in one night. Every paragraph starts with him and the time of night it is. This book catches your attention by making you very familiar with the characters and wonder what happens next or how they get around obstacles.

                The story is about Tommo and his brother Charlie and their friend molly. They are all best friends and go through a lot together, like secretly poaching- and getting caught too. Charlie was the eldest of the three; he was tall and had short blonde hair. Tommo was of average height and was the youngest. Molly was taller than Tommo and just under Charlie’s height. She had long brown hair.

                The book is set in a small village run by the colonel, or lord of the manor house. He lent houses to his workers. Tommo’s father used to work as a lumberjack so he got the house Tommo lives in. The next main setting is in France, from training in etaples then to the frontline trenches.

                Some of my favourite sections are when Tommo and Charlie fed big jo rabbit droppings and saying they were chocolate. This upset their mum a great deal as big jo had learning difficulties and she gave them a good telling-off. Also I like the part when Charlie and molly went into the lake naked and Tommo didn’t.

                Private peaceful had many issues involved that affect Tommo, Charlie and molly. When Tommo’s mother had to work at the manor house, Grandma ‘wolf’ came to care for him, big jo and Charlie. She hit them all the time and hit big Jo the most as she didn’t understand about the learning difficulties he had. She was particularly evil woman, and stopped the three having fun. She did this by killing animals that big Jo liked and she even killed his whole collection of animals, from pigeons to mice to lizards. This upset the three a lot. Another issue was when big jo was feeling very distressed and ran away to the church tower as that was the closest place he could be to heaven. He went here because when anyone mentioned heaven, they pointed to the church tower.

                Overall this book is a long and thorough read, but is full of surprises and questions to answer. Also one plot doesn’t stay for the whole book, there are different themes throughout of ‘innocence and love, courage and cowardice’ as the title page says.