When adventurous Ebbin goes missing at the front in 1916, Angus defies his pacifist upbringing to join the war and search for his beloved brother-in-law. With his navigation experience, Angus is assured a position as a cartographer in London. But upon arriving overseas he is instead sent directly into the trenches, where he experiences the visceral shock of battle. Meanwhile, at home, his perceptive son Simon Peter must navigate escalating hostility in a Nova Scotia fishing village torn by grief and a rising suspicion of anyone expressing less than patriotic enthusiasm for the war.
It took me a little while to warm up to the story as all of the principal characters had to be introduced as well as the problems that they were facing. The story goes back and forth between the Front and what was happening back in Nova Scotia. I was personally much more interesting with the storyline happening in the front, though both are important in painting the whole picture of the war and its impact both to people involved at the front and the loved ones left behind. Survival is an important theme in this novel and takes different forms both at the front and back at home with the internment issues. Everyone has their own way of surviving through the horrors and obstacles before them.
The Cartographer of No Man’s Land can be a bit of a disconnected experience to read but it is nonetheless a well-written, well-researched novel that brought the realities and experiences of the First World War to life as well as the constancy of life itself, how relationships keep on changing and how lives keep on going regardless of a major war raging an ocean away. I did think that the novel ended at a rather strange point, like the resolution was still midair. I recommend this novel for readers of historical fiction and novels that take place in and around the First World War.
You can read this review in its entirety over at caffeinatedlife.net: http://www.caffeinatedlife.net/blog/2013/11/11/review-the-cartographer-of-no-mans-land/
