I don’t really love books that are chiefly a romance, so when I first saw The Morning Gift by Eva Ibbotson – which sounds like a romance when you read the back – I immediately put it back. But when I saw the same book again I decided I might give it a try. I am really glad that I did because the book is so much more than just a romance.
It is about a young woman, Ruth, who lives in Vienna with her family during World War II. The beginning of the book takes place before Hitler took over and the happy times when Ruth is younger serve as contrasts to the horrible events of the war that happen later in the novel. When Nazis move into Vienna, Ruth’s family flees to England, but Ruth is trapped in Vienna because she doesn’t have a visa (which is a problem because she is partly Jewish). Ruth’s fiancée, an aspiring pianist, is trapped in Budapest, so he is prevented from even traveling to Vienna to be with Ruth.
Ruth’s father, when they still lived in Vienna, was a fairly famous professor of paleontology and he had a colleague, Professor Summerville, who had come to stay with Ruth’s family when Ruth was younger. Luckily, Professor Summerville finds Ruth in Vienna and comes up with a plan to bring her safely to England: he will marry her so that she will be connected to an English citizen on her passport and they will get the marriage annulled as soon as possible in England.
After the marriage, Ruth finds her family living close to the poverty line in London and she promises herself not to tell her parents of the marriage; she just plans on getting the marriage annulled and then marrying her fiancée as soon as he arrives from Budapest. As the months progress, a series of very unfortunate events and some things that might have been able to be prevented, Ruth still remains married to the Professor.
At the end of the novel, things turn out for the better and the reader is left with the thought that they just finished a fluffy romance. But looking closer at the events in the book, it becomes more apparent that along with the main plot, there is a history lesson tucked into the main story.
When Ruth is still trapped in Vienna and the Nazis move into the city, the signs of violence and of a dictatorship become evident: swastikas are hanging off buildings, people that were once considered upstanding citizens suddenly turn up missing because they have been sent to a camp, and even Ruth’s fiancée is sent to a camp. Ruth’s family goes from extreme wealth to being crammed into a small apartment with other people they hadn’t previously known and Ruth is so accepting of everything that had happened to her.
This book was very educational and enlightening for me because it depicted an accurate picture of what life might have been for a family fleeing from Hitler’s oppression and it showed how different classes and races of people dealt with world War II.