The Africa Run

by Lucilla Andrews

Summer, 1955. Nurse Elinor MacKenzie is on a passenger liner to Africa when she comes across two medical men from her wartime past. Could one of them also be her future? "Arguably the best of all writers of hospital fiction." Nursing Times Elinor is a war widow whose life took a surprising turn. Dr George Ashden is haunted by the tragic end of his marriage. Dr Paddy Brown is recovering from polio and a broken engagement. As their stories unfold on the long voyage, Elinor, George and Paddy discover that they are travelling towards unexpected destinations. A moving romance, set during the second world war and the 1950s, with all of the trademark sensitivity and realism of a medical story by Lucilla Andrews. The Africa Run is the twenty sixth novel by the bestselling hospital fiction author Lucilla Andrews. For the first time, Lucilla's novels are now available as ebooks. More at www.lucillaandrews.com Perfect for fans of Donna Douglas and her Nightingales series, Jean Fullerton, Maggie Hope and Nadine Dorries.

199 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 1, 1993

About the author

Lucilla Matthew Andrews Crichton
aka
Lucilla Andrews, Diana Gordon, Joanna Marcus.

Lucilla Matthew Andrews was born on 20 November 1919 in Suez, Egypt, the third of four children of William Henry Andrews and Lucilla Quero-Bejar. They met in Gibraltar, and married in 1913. Her mother was daughter of a Spanish doctor and descended from the Spanish nobility. Her British father workerd by the Eastern Telegraph Company (later Cable and Wireless) on African and Mediterranean stations until 1932. At the age of three, she was sent to join her older sister at boarding school in Sussex.

She joined the British Red Cross in 1940 and later trained as a nurse at St Thomas' Hospital, London, during World War II. In 1947, she retired and married Dr James Crichton, and she discovered, that he was addicted to drugs. In 1949, soon after their daugther Veronica was born, he was committed to hospital and she returned to nursing and writing. In 1952, she sold her firt romance novel, published in 1954, the same year that her husband died. She specialised in Doctor-Nurse romances, using her personal experience as inspiration, and wrote over thirty-five novels since 1996. In 1969, she decided moved to Edinburgh.

Her daugther read History at Newnham College, Cambridge, and became a journalist and Labour Party communications adviser, before her death from cancer in 2002. In late 2006, Lucilla Andrews' autobiography No Time for Romance became the focus of a posthumous controversy. It has been alleged that the novelist Ian McEwan plagiarized from this work while writing his highly-acclaimed novel, Atonement. McEwan has protested his innocence. She passed away on 3 October 2006. She was a founder member of the Romantic Novelists' Association, which honoured her shortly before her death with a lifetime achievement award.

Reviews

[Nightwitch · Rating 3 out of 5]

A departure from Andrews' usual writing in that it's written in the third person and we begin with our focus on Paddy and George; we are a fair way into the book before we meet Elinor. Perhaps in consequence, George feels more fully realized than Andrews' male characters usually are, and Elinor is a little harder to grasp than her heroine-narrators usually are. Chronologically the book jumps around a fair amount, but Andrews does a good job telegraphing the lead-ins to each wartime moment. Some of the wartime entries are more relevant/interesting than others; some of them are frankly flooded with too many characters in too few pages (many of whom have their own books - this was one of Andrews' later books - but since honestly it's hard for me to remember her heroines' names, that got wearisome). This was another book that was in many ways more slice-of-life than romance; it's clear fairly early who the "right" man for Elinor is, but neither George nor Paddy had even thought about her much since the end of the war, and for all the time they spent together then, it apparently takes one or two relatively minor incidents on this cruise for them to come to Important Realizations About Themselves. A pleasant and undemanding read, but not a favorite for me.

[Hilary Tesh · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author’s penultimate book, published in 1993 set in 1955 in the dying days of the British empire, with flashbacks to wartime St Martha’s hospital (based on St Thomas’ where Lucilla Andrews herself trained). The main setting is a ship transporting “Brits” back to Africa, amongst whom the assumption of white superiority is taken for granted and the social strata swept away back in Britain by the war is still prevalent. Ship board life and these attitudes are portrayed vividly in a way that makes us cringe nowadays, knowing what we do about the Mau Mau uprising, apartheid and the outcomes of colonialism we still live with.

Into this mix, the author introduces her main characters - Paddy, a Martha’s doctor recovering from polio and sent on a sea voyage by a well wisher, Elinor, a former Martha’s nurse and war widow who is travelling to visit a friend in S. Africa and George, also a Martha’s doctor, a former POW, recently widowed himself who’s on his way to take up a medical post in Rhodesia. The romance element is, of course, obvious from the start and this is where the book stumbles. Characteristically of the author’s later books, there are way too many meaningful glances exchanged, unspoken thoughts and assumptions - when the two characters do get round to telling each other anything, long unrealistic speeches.

So 4 stars for shipboard life and colonial attitudes and 2 stars for romance and Lucilla Andrews’ long winded sentences.

[Flo · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is not a good book. Elinor and Paddy have a history during WWII in a hospital in London where they are both working. She is married to a man that has gone missing in the East. She has not heard anything from him or about him for 4 years. After the war she and Paddy meet again while aboard a ship sailing around Africa. She has since heard her husband diedas a POW and she has had an affair with a married man. The writer jumps to the war years and then to the ship. It was just not interesting.

[Deb · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lucilla strikes a small blow for equality.

Intellectual and educational equality for women, that is, but not social equality. Also, her characters express their horror at racism and apartheid.

[Miriam · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't like the way the story jumps backwards and forwards in time, and there were a few things that annoyed me about the main characters, but this a fascinating snapshot of life during the waning days of the British Empire, and the setting and other characters on the boat are very interesting.