the war that saved my life by kimberly brubaker bradley

Fearful and nervous, she hoards, mistrusts physical affection, is ashamed to talk about her foot and struggles to express love until the very end of the book. Her journey is about constructing belief, and that path is less clear.Īda can’t simply shake off the pain of the past, because she suffers from a kind of PTSD. But those physical solutions only take her so far, because of course Ada’s journey isn’t really a physical one at all.

She discovers that her horrible mother is conveniently dead, so Ada and her brother, Jamie, can live happily with their kind guardian, Susan, in a comfortable country cottage. In the book’s first chapters, her clubfoot is repaired and she finds herself mending in a hospital. Ada’s journey, we understand, will be about learning to believe.Īda’s physical and external problems will be solved rather quickly. “You can know things all you like,” Ada says in the very beginning of the book, “but that doesn’t mean you believe them.” This is the book’s anchor.

In some ways, the structure of “The War I Finally Won” could not be simpler. Leaving us to wonder: Now what? Now comes Ada’s aftermath, as she struggles not to let her trauma define her life. They will have watched her journey out of that dark place, into one of relative safety. Readers of Kimberly Brubaker Bradley’s last novel, “The War That Saved My Life,” will already be familiar with the terrible particulars of Ada Smith’s childhood: her abusive mother, her captivity in a single shabby room in London during World War II, her painful clubfoot and its associated shame. THE WAR I FINALLY WON By Kimberly Brubaker Bradley 385 pp.

The war that saved my life by kimberly brubaker bradley