The Stars We Share by Rafe Posey
One of the great perks of being a bookseller is the discovery of authors I might otherwise never know. I am constantly going through both print and digital catalogues of new books being released by dozens and dozens of publishers and distributors. When I see something I think will be of interest to myself and customers I will order a copy. There are a lot that are disappointing but many that are quite wonderful and become books I can’t wait to share with my customers.
The Stars We Share by Rafe Posey is one of those. This is a debut novel, which I often feel is the book, the story, a writer is meant to tell. In this case within four pages I already knew I loved it. Though the story is completely different I felt the same sense of a story being perfectly unfurled that I felt while reading All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr.
The Stars We Share is about Alec and June, who meet when they are children and know, without a doubt, they are meant for each other, for life. Alec has been sent home to England after the deaths of his parents in Bombay, it is 1927. June is the daughter of the vicar in the village where Alec comes to live with his aunt.
Alec and June grow up, knowing they will marry when the time is right. They are in University when the Second World War begins. Alec joins the air force and June wonders what she can do to help in the war effort. June is exceptionally intelligent and an expert mathematician. She is recruited into the Secret Service, and signing the Official Secrets Act pledges never to tell anyone what she is doing – no one, ever.
While Alec spends his war in great danger, he imagines that June is safe working in a government office in London. He worries about the bombing but trusts that she is safe.
June, however, is not in London. She works in many places in England before being sent out of the country.
How then do they come together again? How do they make a life when there is so much unknown between them – especially about June’s wartime work? That’s the magic of the novelist, to take this imagined couple and the people in their created world and make them all come alive. To imagine how they will behave, how they will live their lives, how they will reconcile – or not – to what life has presented them with.
The Stars We Share – one of the best books I’ve read this summer.