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Postcards
from No Man's Land
Carnegie
Medal 1999 
Michael
Printz Award, U.S.A. 2003 
Summaries
from reviews:
Horn
Book starred review, July-August
2002:
"Known
for his criticism and his commentary on the state of children's
literature, Aidan Chambers has also been highly regarded for
the nerve and wit with which his young adult novels are composed.
Chambers plays with narrative conventions, often using the shapeliness
of innovative prose forms to stand in for the allure of romance.
With the Carnegie Medal-winner Postcards from No Man's Land,
he takes his concerns several steps further and produces a truly
memorable novel: teens may remember not only that they read
it, but also where and when they read it. The story unfolds
in two tellings. Seventeen-year-old Jacob Todd has gone to Amsterdam
as an emissary of his grandmother, to visit the survivors among
the Dutch family that had given succor to Jacob's grandfather
during the Allied invasion to liberate the Netherlands. Jacob
is adrift and uncertain: he is sexually ambivalent, wordy and
moody and kind, and, like most teens, self-absorbed. As he finds
his footing, his friends, and his family in Amsterdam, his story
is intercepted by one of the most gripping World War II narratives
to make its way into the pages of a young adult novel. The young
Geertrui, a maiden in the town of Oosterbeek, helps rescue and
then conceal an English soldier who is wounded in the campaign.
They fall in love, and their passion and their suffering are
recounted without cynicism or sentimentality, making their romance
one of the most striking in my reading experience. The contemporary
Jacob, hearing the story in bits and pieces, begins to recognize
glimpses of himself - not just in his grandfather and grandmother
and Geertrui, but in the various companions and lovers he stumbles
upon, in the words of Ben Jonson's poetry, and in a painting
by Rembrandt. He pieces together a sense of self out of snips
and bits; in short, he accepts that a confusion of moral choices
is a necessary and indeed tolerable condition of existence.
Terminally-ill Geertrui prepares herself for assisted death;
Jacob considers sexual experimentation and love; the reader
closes the novel resolved not to prettify human choices, nor
simplify them, but to honor the difficulty and commitment of
making one's life one's life. This novel is a career
capstone, the effort of a mature novelist devoting his full
attention and full respect to his readers, and it works." Gregory
Maguire.
Amazon.co.uk
'Two
craftily interwoven stories, separated by 50 years in time,
make up this emotionally and intellectually challenging novel.
Set in Holland, one story tells of the passionate love between
a young Dutch woman [Geertrui Wesseling] and Jacob Todd, a wounded
English soldier: "I filled the glass and gave it to the soldier
who had not yet spoken, who now said, 'Thanks, miss, you're
an angel of mercy.' He had eyes that made me melt."
The
other story finds the English soldier's grandson visiting Amsterdam
for the commemoration of the Battle of Arnhem. Before he knows
it, he's way out of his emotional depth: 'His arrival yesterday
had been embarrassing. His visit to the Anne Frank house had
been upsetting. His confusion of a boy for a girl unnerved him.
The mugging had left him duff.' The learning curve is steep
and readers can't help becoming thoroughly engrossed in the
powerful emotions as well as being confronted with questions
which simply don't have easy answers. This is a riveting, thought-provoking
and thoroughly worthwhile read.' Tamsin Palmer
The
English and Media Magazine.
'The
author makes us work at this text. Jacob's insecurity and confusion
at the beginning are reflected in the reader's own. Nothing
is spelled out. One has to read closely to decipher what is
going on. Insignificant remarks become significant later. Incidents
which initially seem irrelevant reveal their importance as the
book advances. Even the title holds its secret until the end
of the book. The plot not only provides two storylines carefully
interwoven, but also ties in significantly with Anne Frank's
diary, causing the reader to want to reacquaint with this work,
particularly the more recent edition. […]
By
the end of the story Jacob has moved on emotionally, and is
given adult responsibilities by the Dutch family that only he
can deal with. There is a lot for Jacob - and the reader - to
think about, as concerns such as euthanasia, homosexuality,
emerging sexuality, true love and friendship between old and
young, war and history are all considered. This is a rich book,
warmly and intelligently written by an author who evidently
also loves Amsterdam, describing it vividly and affectionately.'
Marilyn Brocklehurst
Kirkus
Reviews, 15 April 2002
"*Chambers's
Carnegie Medal-winning work is a rich, complex story that tackles
big themes: time, death, happiness, love, sex, war, and the
meaning of life. It covers much ground, from WWII to the present,
from Anne Frank to Ben Jonson to Rembrandt and his son Titus.
Jacob realizes that finding his place in the world involves
understanding the past, observing life with complete attention,
and holding onto ideals. 'You have to know your own truth and
stick to it. And never despair. Never give up. There's always
hope.' This is a wide-ranging, challenging, beautifully written
novel for older teenagers and adults who love to settle into
a big, rewarding story."
Booklist
"*STAR*…part
thrilling WWII love story and part edgy, contemporary, coming-of-age
fiction…Chambers weaves together past and present with enough
plot, characters, and ideas for several YA books, but he does
it with such mastery that all the pieces finally come together,
imparting compelling discoveries about love, courage, family,
and sexual identity. Common to all the stories is the heroism
of ordinary people…Jacob finds no neat answers, just a sense
of the rich and painful confusion of what it means to be human."
[Hazel Rochman]
Publishers
Weekly, 29 April, 2002:
"*
Sophisticated teenage readers yearning for a wider view of life
may find themselves intoxicated by this Carnegie Medal-winning
novel…Jam-packed with ideas and filled with passionate characters…Along
with literature, art and love, topics dealt with here include
euthanasia, adultery and bisexuality. These issues never become
problems to be solved; rather they are part of the story's texture,
neither more nor less significant than the precarious joy of
investigating a new city and a foreign culture. No tidy endings
here - the concluding scenes present Jacob with a complicated
moral dilemma that remains unresolved. The implied challenges
of the future make the final pages all the more satisfying:
it's clear that Jacob can not only cope with ambiguity but can
employ it to enlarge himself on the voyage of self-discovery
he has so auspiciously begun."
A
note about The Dance Sequence - click
here.
ARTICLE
Stockport
School Book K4 Award
2000
Andersen Award, Italy 2001
JHunt
Young Adult Literature Award (USA) for 2002
Buy
On-line
First
published by Bodley Head 1999
Definitions
paperback Postcards from No Man's Land, January 2007,
ISBN 978-1-862-30284-6, £6.99
U.S.A.
edition, published 24 May 2002, by Dutton, hardback, 312pp,
$19.99, ISBN 0-525-46863-3
All
contents are ©Aidan Chambers unless otherwise stated.
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'What
a need we humans have for confession. To a priest, to a friend,
to a psychoanalyst, to a relative, to an enemy, even to a torturer
when there is no one else, it doesn't matter so long as we speak
out what moves within us. Even the most secretive of us do it,
if no more than writing in a private diary. And I have often
thought as I read stories and novels and poems, especially poems,
that they are no more than the authors' confessions transformed
by their art into something that confesses for us all. Indeed,
looking back on my lifelong passion for reading, the one activity
that has kept me going and given me the only lasting pleasure,
I think this is the reason that explains why it means so much
to me. The books, the authors who mean the most are those who
speak to me and speak for me all those things about life I most
need to hear as the confession of myself.'
Geertrui Wesseling in Postcards from No Man's Land
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