This children’s book is the best thing I’ve read all month and will probably be one of my books of the year. I’ve been a great admirer of Hilary McKay since first reading The Exiles years ago and this book is what you’d expect from her: well written and full of characters you care about. The story begins in the early years of the twentieth century, which fills the adult reader with the dread of foreknowledge. First, there’s Peter and Clarry, brother and sister living with their distant and uncaring father in a cold and neglected house. The children live for their annual visit to their grandparents in Cornwall, where they find sun, sea and endless happy days with their cousin Rupert, a golden boy. Later, there’s Simon, ‘the bony one’, Peter’s schoolfriend and Simon’s sister Vanessa, who becomes Clarry’s best friend. The relations between these five children take the story into their adulthood.

Clarry is an adorable heroine. She’s loving, even when she gets little return for her love from an indifferent father and bad-tempered brother and unquestioningly accepting of the hardness of her life. Luckily, after meeting Vanessa, she determines to go to the Grammar School, where she turns out to be clever. Her father considers education for girls a waste of time but with the help of teachers and Peter, Clarry learns to be ambitious. Poor girl; she’s so badly dressed, so naïve, so anxious to help and please everyone. This makes her sound like a horrid little prig but she so isn’t.

By the time war breaks out, only Rupert is old enough to fight. The others are all still at school and Peter can never be a soldier because of a crippled leg. Life on the home front consists of endless making do, worrying, writing letters to the front and for Vanessa, nursing. Naturally, no one at home can imagine the horrors of the Western Front and Rupert does not enlighten them. Tragedy, humour, love and friendship are all mixed together in a very enjoyable way.

I do have a caveat. The publishers aim this book at nine and eleven-year-olds. When I was nine I had frightened myself reading Jane Eyre and Oliver Twist but most of my fiction reading consisted of happy family stories by Monica Edwards, Noel Streatfeild and Jane Shaw. How would I have coped with slaughtered horses, massacred men and homosexuality? I can’t imagine. Modern children are more exposed to horrors than we were and it’s up to parents to decide whether a book like this is nightmare-inducing or life-enhancing. I think the latter.

I read this thanks to the publishers and NetGalley and it will be out on 20th September. Only a month to wait!

A wonderful book for those aged 10 to adult. We follow Clarry, born at the start of the novel, closely followed by the death of her Mother when she was just days old. Clarry throughout blames herself and thinks others do too. Set at the beginning of the 20th century Clarry is an intelligent girl trying to follow rules she doesn't know about. She's constantly told that girls don't do this, that or the other, but can't quite see why.
Her Father, like many Victorian - Georgian men, does not have a lot to do with his children, but he takes it to the extreme. Peter, Clarry's elder brother is content to let Clarry run around after him, but later on does start to mature into a more sensible adult. The Grandparents are the most well rounded adults, having strict ideas in the beginning, but mellowing as they, and the grandchildren grow up. Rupert, their other grandchild is the much loved cousin of Clarry, and admired by Peter with just a hint of jealousy.
Other characters are perfectly developed. From Miss Vane, a neighbour who takes it upon herself to advise on bringing up a young lady, to Mrs Morgan, the help, who regularly surprises both Clarry and the reader when she calmly announces she used to do blacksmith work before her brother was interested in it, or that she was going to work in a factory as it paid better than being the unappreciated help to Clarry's Father.
There are many snatches of humour provided by Clarry quite unintentionally. Giving away unwanted items to the rag and bone man who is perfectly aware of their value, burying a duck to avoid having to pluck it, not quite knowing how to respond when asked if her Father was still 'full of the joys of Spring'?
However, this is also a war story. It is the war to end all wars. It was brutal, not the adventure Rupert - and others, thought it would be. Clarry too has her innocence destroyed by the realisation of what goes on. Vanessa, a schoolfriend and slightly older than Clarry, has the money and the courage to volunteer as a nurse and start living a more fulfilled life than the one previously laid out for young ladies.
A book which lays bare the inequalities of the lives of the rich and poor, men and women of the early 1900s and demonstrates the resourcefulness needed by women to start to change these.

What a great book! Transported me back to my childhood - not ww2! But the enjoyment I got from reading at that age. Lots of different themes to pick up on

The first part of The Skylarks' War is about the childhood of three cousins, mainly their Summers in Cornwall. The loneliness of Clarry's life, and the cruel way her father treats her is quite heartbreaking. The second half of the book is their story during the First World War. By this point there are more characters, but each one is complete in their own way, none have just a walk on part. This book is incredibly moving; I feel bereft to have finished it. I would love there to be another volume about this loveable family. In particular, Clarry's and Vanessa are such admirable people.

Hilary McKay’s Casson family books are some of my most beloved children’s fiction, so I was breathlessly anticipating this standalone about the First World War. The Skylarks’ War opens at the turn of the century, and proceeds at a brisk clip through idyllic Cornish summers, comic boarding school woes, and Clarry's coming of age under the spreading shadow of the conflict. McKay is, miraculously, always funny and always warmly, practically compassionate, and her ear for dialogue - which has always leaned classic, to my ear - is as clear and ringing as ever. The subject matter enables her to use a more lyrical, elegiac mode than in the Casson books, but it is always grounded absolutely in the realities of family and friendship and the practical, daily work of loving people. Someone less charitable than me might feel moved to note that Vanessa reads a lot like Cadmium Casson transplanted to an army hospital, but I'd argue that McKay writing in that specific voice is such a total joy that it would be churlish to object. This is a beautiful, beautiful book, clear-eyed and unsentimental and immensely moving. It feels, instantly, like a classic.

This is a story with a good British stiff upper lip: Clary and her brother group up in a house with an emotionally absent father, and face the tragedies of the First World War. It's a bit like an E Nesbit where, as you read, you are wrapped up in the warm world of the likeable characters, but underlying the warmth lies real hardship and pain. Clary in particular, with her determination and her optimism, is a hugely lovable, but the reader really cares about each of the characters, however awkward they at first appear.
Younger readers can enjoy The Skylarks' War as a good family story, but lurking beneath the surface are many themes - love, women's education, shell shock, bravery and cowardice - that the reader can choose to pick up on, and reflect on at leisure.
This is vintage Hilary McKay - every bit as good as her previous novels. A page-turning read that packs an emotional punch.

Hilary McKay has excelled herself with The Skylarks' War. It is a wonderful piece of writing about love, loyalty, friendship and war. Clarry, Peter, Rupert, Simon and Vanessa are superb, well-rounded characters with flaws and failings who interact in the complex ways of human beings. The story is engrossing and involving and un-put-downable! I read it almost without stopping, desperate to know how things would be resolved - or not. I cannot recommend it highly enough.