How can a reader not be affected by what they read in Andro Linklater's THE CODE OF LOVE? How can a reader not put the book down, after they're finished with it, to call or see the person they love and tell them so? How can a reader not feel for Pamela Kirrage and Donald Hill as they wend their way through the trials and heartaches of World War II? It would be hard for a reader not to do these things, because THE CODE OF LOVE is, just as it's title suggests, an astonishing true tale of secrets, love, and war.

Linklater, author of several nonfiction books including WILD PEOPLE and MEASURING AMERICA, has written a tremendous love story. RAF pilot Donald Hill was stationed in Hong Kong during the war, away from his fiancee Pamela Kirrage, who was waiting for him back in England. After Hong Kong fell on December 25, 1941, Donald was a prisoner of war for four more debilitating years until Japan surrendered. On January 13, 1946, Donald and Pamela were married, ending a wait of six and a half years. But he was not same, and the love that they shared before the war was much different when the war ended.

Donald Hill kept a war diary. He could have been killed for having such a thing in the Japanese camp. The diary was written in code, a series of numbers, four at time, in small boxes running up and down the pages like a grid. Resembling multiplication tables, the boxes read across the page: 5.14.1, 9.11.20, 6.18.1, and on and on. Donald would always skirt the subject of his diary during the years he and Pamela were married. When he died, he took the secret of the diary with him. Pamela, eager to seek out its contents, understanding that truly knowing Donald Hill meant reading the diary, took it to a mathematician who said he would try to crack the code. After much struggle, he did just that. Using the diary as well as research and interviews, Linklater paints a vibrant and vital portrait of life during World War II and common people falling uncommonly in love.

The bulk of the story is about Donald's time in camp, the horrid conditions, his state of mind, how he kept himself busy so he wouldn't go insane. But slowly he did and, after he returned home, married Pamela --- his life's love --- his life began to crumble. He put up walls around himself so that no one could get too close, he threw himself into a rage over the smallest provocation. He did not know what it was that was breaking him or what he could do to fix it. Pamela stood by him, their children with them, but their lives continued to spiral downward.

THE CODE OF LOVE is a touching book about real people with a real love in an unreal time. World War II changed more than just the political nature of an era, it changed countries and communities and, more than that, it changed people more than they could even imagine.

   --- Reviewed by Jonathan Shipley

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