Trapeze

Praise

“A fascinating WWII novel based in fact…Coming-of-age story meets old-fashioned tale of adventure.” –Publishers Weekly
 
“Much-lauded British author Mawer vividly describes the deprivations in a war occupied country and its once-vibrant capital and provides testimony to the courage of countless members of the French Resistance. But this is primarily a masterfully crafted homage to the 53 extraordinary women of the French section of the SOE on whose actual exploits the novel is based.  With its lyrical yet spare prose and heart-pounding climax, this is a compelling historical thriller of the highest order.” –Booklist (starred review) 

“The book is full of the fascinating minutiae of espionage–aircraft drops, code-cracking, double agents, scrambled radio messages.  There’s a romance, too, though Mawer isn’t one to dwell on his characters’ inner lives, and Marian, who is “trained to keep secrets,” remains frustratingly unknowable.  Still, Mawer exhibits a great feeling for suspence, and produces memorable episodes in dark alleyways, deserted cafes, and shadowy corners of Père Lachaise” –The New Yorker

“Incorporating many of the finest elements of spy thrillers and even romance novels, Trapeze is a fascinating tale of and homage to the resistance fighters and members of the SOE.” –New York Journal of Books

“Like the best historical fiction, the book is very much of its intended time, full of clandestine tidbits and Churchillian attitude, but not to the exclusion of the human elements that are required of any compelling story.” –The Daily Beast
 
“Trapeze sets a thriller-like pace, and Mawer writes compellingly about the deprivations of wartime France as well as the everyday dangers of occupied Paris…Though very much a story about the intricacies of the spy network, Trapeze is also about a young woman who is called upon to do something extraordinary and is thus forever changed.” –Bookpage
 
“Where his last Booker-shortlisted novel, The Glass Room, gave an expansive overview of a whole country over the course of 50 years, Mawer’s latest is a more intense and tightly-focused story. Radiating an atmosphere of tense suspicion and claustrophobia, it is utterly gripping from start to finish.” –Daily Mail (UK)
 
“In this literary thriller, inspired by real female agents during WWII, an Englishwoman is recruited into a dangerous espionage mission.” –Karen Holt, O Magazine

“Simon Mawer is an elegant writer and a meticulous researcher…[Trapeze] combines a stirring adventure with a potent reflection on the allure of desire, duty and danger.” –London Evening Standard (UK)
 
“Mawer’s representations of England and France — both rural and urban — are at once eerily quiet and bustling with confusion, as he illustrates the fateful moments in a war and in a young woman’s life.” –Historical Novel Society
 
“Mawer’s crisp prose, erudite science and subtle bilingual details raise Trapeze above the genre riff-raff.” –Shelf Awareness

“There are many shades of Graham Greene here…[Trapeze] delivers its story with the same delicate, stropped-razor deadliness that creeps up on you like Harry Lime in the shadows, nastily irresistible.” –Financial Times
 
“Readers will be stunned as they read the final pages of this fast-paced and exhilarating historical novel about a young woman’s path to maturity.” –The Columbus Dispatch

“Readers who empathize with Marian, and many will, will be stunned as they read the final pages of this fast-paced and exhilarating historical novel about a young woman’s path to maturity” –Shelf Awareness
 
“A brilliant and engaging blend of fact and fiction, this novel will hook readers from the start and amaze them with a story of adventure, betrayal, growing into adulthood and love.” –KSL
 
“In a perfect combination of intrigue, romance, betrayal and incredible bravery, Mawer has, once again, as he did in The Glass Room, told a story that is factual and fictional with the edges blurred just so.” –Seattle Times
 
“Trapeze…is a stark, focused adventure…[a] skillfully and intelligently executed thriller.” –Washington Post

“Trapeze…is a stark, focused adventure…Although narrower in scope than Mawer’s earlier work, Trapeze is no less rich and provocative. And in Marian he’s created a marvelous heroine.” –Newday