REVIEW: The Woman with No Name by Audrey Blake
She’ll light the fire of resistance—but she may get burned…
1942. Though she survived the bomb that destroyed her home, Yvonne Rudellat’s life is over. She’s estranged from her husband, her daughter is busy with war work, and Yvonne—older, diminutive, overlooked—has lost all purpose. Until she’s offered a chance to remake herself entirely…
The war has taken a turn for the worse, and the men in charge are desperate. So, when Yvonne is recruited as Britain’s first female sabotage agent, expectations are low. But her tenacity, ability to go unnoticed, and aptitude for explosives set her apart. Soon enough she arrives in occupied France with a new identity, ready to set the Nazi regime ablaze.
But there are adversaries on all sides. As Yvonne becomes infamous as the nameless, unstoppable woman who burns the enemy at every turn, she realizes she may lose herself to the urgent needs of the cause …
Dear Ladies,
When I first looked at this book, for some reason I thought it was a straight non-fiction account of a French resistance agent. Then I started reading it and looked closer at the cover and saw “a novel” and wondered if I’d imagined what I initially thought. Further investigation revealed that this is the novelization of the life of a real, older woman, Yvonne Rudellat, who had been turned down when she tried to volunteer for various agencies in London to help the war effort but who eventually came to the attention of the SOE.
I can believe that it was difficult to turn her story into a novel. She was in her early forties when she was recruited, small, short, easy to overlook. Who’d believe that she would stick out the grueling training needed to become an agent. Her exploits once in France did “set [her small corner of] Europe ablaze” as Churchill wanted. The real events that are known of what she and her recruited band of resistants achieved are impressive. What is imagined of what happened to her after the Germans finally managed to get their hands on her makes sense. The postwar letter written to her daughter by Vera Adkins explains much that might (as I’ve gathered after reading other reviews) puzzle readers.
I liked how Yvonne’s training in the UK and time in France are alternated. Her male trainees and resistants might have initially dismissed her but the Germans knew of her and were determined to catch her. One thing that did bother me a bit is that Yvonne, as written, appears to have brushed aside the civilian deaths that resulted from the actions of her resistance cell. C’est la guerre I suppose. While at times the pace of the novel gets bogged down a little in explanation, the dangers that agents faced were palpable which makes their determination to keep going all the more admirable. B-
~Jayne
AmazonBNKoboBook DepositoryGoogle
