This accomplished sequel to Young’s bestselling My Dear, I Wanted to Tell You and The Heroes’ Welcome has Tom and Kitty Locke growing up during the two decades of peace between the first and second world wars. The first war shaped their family: their mother, dead; their father, Peter, crippled by post-traumatic stress disorder. They are brought up by Riley, who is disfigured (Tom speaks of the “jawbone Riley had left in France”), and Nadine. Devotion is, in essence, a Bildungsroman – Tom and Kitty learn to reflect on their family’s experience of war and on the coming of another, they form political and personal identities, and they fall in love – Tom with Nenna, the daughter of Nadine’s brother, Aldo, a founding member of Italian fascism. Young expertly weaves questions of politics, race and loyalty into the Locke family’s narrative; when Mussolini joins forces with Hitler, Aldo’s unfaltering devotion to Mussolini becomes a threat to the entire family.
Devotion is published by HarperCollins (£14.99). Click here to buy it for £11.99
