Maureen duffy's 'change' is a semi-realist, semi-experimental work, covering world war ii, and told from multiple perspectives. There's hilary, the grammar-school girl from a humble east end background who is evacuated and later becomes a land girl, falling in love with one of her female co-workers. There's her father wilf, who fought in world war i and is horrified to see the world plunged into chaos again, and her dauntless mother lil. There's hilary's contemporary sylvie, who goes out to 'entertain the troops' in cairo, and various other women working for the war effort, including daphne, a middle-class mother turned van driver. There's daphne's daughter ailsa, evacuated to sherborne, and her friend lennie, who goes into the navy and ends up in a terrifying situation marooned somewhere near madagascar. There's daphne's officer husband harry, whose later memoirs help to remind us exactly what was going on in the war at any particular time, and karol, a polish naval officer haunted by memories of his homeland. There's tilde, a german jewish refugee living in london and mourning her past in hamburg, and there's also, somewhat bizarrely, a group of apes observing the soldiers fighting in the jungle.