Tag Archives: WWII

Literature and War Readalong May 28 2012: Darkness Falls From the Air by Nigel Balchin

Posted in Books, Novel, Readalong by

I had never heard of Nigel Balchin before reading a few intriguing reviews on Guy’s blog (here, here and here). When I looked him up and saw he wrote a novel – Darkness Falls From the Air – which is called the “classic novel of the London Blitz” and written during the Blitz in 1942, I was keen on including it this year. Balchin seems one of those authors hardly anyone knows anymore but those who rediscover him are usually enthusiastic. It even seems that he is Patrick McGrath’s favourite novelist.

After having read about the bombing of Coventry written by a contemporary writer it will be interesting to see how someone handles the Blitz who has actually experienced it.

Here are the first sentences

I stopped at about seven. There was too much stuff on my desk to have a chance of getting clear that night, and I was tired of it. I felt pretty guilty coming downstairs, and had to tell myself  that this was the first time this week that I had stopped before eight.

Two French officers were just coming in the front door as I went out, and I did the bowing and waving act that I always do to them. It struck me as odd that they should still be around – unless they had decided to stay on in England and fight with us.

*******

The discussion starts on Monday, 28 May 2012.

Further information on the Literature and War Readalong 2012, including all the book blurbs, can be found here.

Helen Humphreys: Coventry (2008) Literature and War Readalong April 2012

Posted in Books, Novel, Readalong by

Helen Humphrey’s novel Coventry starts with a woman and a young man standing on Coventry cathedral, on November 14, 1942. Harriet and Jeremy are fire fighters. It’s an eerie night, almost beautiful.

The moon is full and bright and the ground below the cathedral is white with frost. Harriet has never seen anything so beautiful. The ground glitters like the sea and smells of earthy cold.

This is the night in which Coventry cathedral will be bombed and most of the city destroyed. But when the bombs start falling and even after most of the destruction, Harriet still sees beauty.

The leaves have burnt black on the trees. The limbs are twisted and full of clothes, caught there like strange birds in the upper branches. The clothes must have blown up there from a bomb blast.

Harriet remembers the morning of November 14. How beautiful it was, all sun, and only a little wind to remind her of autumn. It was a thursday, early closing. She had gone round to the shops before lunch, and she had felt lucky because she was first in line at the butcher’s and got sausages.

Until this evening Harriet didn’t feel touched by the war. She is disappointed by it but not devastated. She will not, as she believes, suffer like she did in the last war when she lost the man she loved.

After the brief initial chapter, the novel moves back to 1914. A young Harriet sees her husband off to war. The very same morning, after returning from the train station, she meets Maeve, and lives a moment of intense friendship with the young woman. Harriet will not see her husband again. He goes missing in the trenches. And until the night of November 1940, she will not see Maeve again either.

Unbeknownst to all of them, the young man on the roof with Harriet, is Maeve’s son. The story of the two women’s lives will unfold during the novel, interwoven with the story of this tragic night in which the three fight in parallel and together, for their survival.

Harriet has never loved again and Maeve who left Coventry shortly after having met Harriet, gets pregnant. She doesn’t even know which one of the slodiers she was seeing is the father.

Most of the chapters focus on Harriet and Jeremy who flee from the burning cathedral, roam the streets, hide in shelters, run from the bombs and burning debris. They are looking for Maeve and their houses, anxious to discover how much they might have lost. The destruction is incredible, the sight of so many dead people is terrible but it’s even more harrowing to hear voices coming out from underneath demolished houses and not be able to help, to stand by and hear them suffocate. There are many descriptions of people whose life is snatched away within a second. One moment they are talking, shaving, walking, the next moment they are gone.

Coventry is a lyrical novel, written by a poet, telling the story of a poet who is trying to make sense. Since the tragic loss of her young husband, Harriet has written condensed descriptions. They shield her from emotion, give sense. That’s what she will do in the future as well. After the terrible night in which Coventry is destroyed, she will become a poet.

While Harriet paints with words, Maeve captures everything that has happened with her pencil. Already when they met in 1914 she was drawing constantly.

I’m in two minds about this book. It’s an intense description of what it meant to be in a city undergoing such massive destruction. This is well captured, at the same time, the addition of descriptions like the ones above, hold the horrors at arm’s length. I’m interested in the depiction and description of war. How do you put it into words, how do speak about the unspeakable? I think this was one of Helen Humphrey’s intentions, to show how a poet would write and feel about this horrible night. That’s why, more than a book about Coventry’s ordeal, this was for me a book about the birth of a poet. And that’s precisely what troubles me. I’ve read other books by Helen Humphreys and liked them, but in this case I feel the writing is too lyrical and esthetic for its topic. And there is the coincidence at the heart of the story, the fact that the young man Harriet spends the night with is Maeve’s son. Unfortunately I really don’t do well with this type of coincidence.

Coventry is a beautifully written book, the novel of a stylist but some rough edges would have given it a whole other dimension that would have been more appropriate for the subject. Still, and this may seem paradoxical, it is a book I would like to read again, if only for its language. Maybe I’m not doing it justice, maybe I’m just not used to someone describing war in such a lyrical way and depicting people who are so caught in their inner lives that they seem ultimately untouched by the collective experience of destruction.

I’m very curious to see what others thought.

Other reviews

Additionally to his review Tony has written an interesting post on his hometown Coventry and the Coventry Cathedral. It’s well worth reading.

Anna (Diary of an Eccentric)

Danielle (A Work in Progress)

TBM (50 Year Project)

Tony (Tony’s Reading List)

*******

Coventry was the fourth book in the Literature and War Readalong 2012. The next one will be Nigel Balchin’s Darkness Falls From the Air. Discussion starts on Monday May 28, 2012.

Literature and War Readalong April 30 2012: Coventry by Helen Humphreys

Posted in Books, Novel, Readalong by

With last month’s book we have left WWI behind us and move on to WWII. The first of the WWII books is Helen Humphreys’ novel Coventry. I thought this would be my first novel by this author but I have read another one before, The Lost Garden, a wonderfully lyrical coming-of-age story which I liked a lot. With this in mind I’m keen on reading Coventry. Helen Humphreys is British but she lives in Ontario, Canada. Helen Humphreys has won several prizes, she is the author of 4 novels, one book of narrative non-fiction and four collections of poetry. I have a weakness for poets who write novels or novelists who write poetry because the writing is usually far above the average.

On the back cover of the novel it says that Coventry is “a memorial to the terrible losses of wartime, and a celebration of remembrance, determination and resilience.” The book tells the story of two women and moves back and forth between 1919 and the night of the 14 November 1940.

Here are the first sentences

The swallow arcs and dives above the cathedral. Harriet March watches it flicker through the darkness ahead of her as she walks along the cobblestones towards the church. The bird moves in the night air with all the swiftness of sudden feeling, and Harriet stops at the base of the ladder, tracking the flight of the lone swallow as it shivers up the length of the church spire.

*******

The discussion starts on Monday, 30 April 2012.

Further information on the Literature and War Readalong 2012, including all the book blurbs, can be found here.

Heinrich Böll: The Silent Angel – Der Engel schwieg (1951) Literature and War Readalong November 2011 Meets German Literature Month

Posted in Books, German Literature, Novel, Readalong by

Written between 1949 – 1951 Der Engel schwieg  or The Silent Angel is unique in many ways. Unique for German literature but also in Böll’s work. I have already written about it in my post on Sebald’s The Natural History of Destruction. Böll’s novel, which is one of the rare to depict a German city after the massive bombings by the Allies, had to wait 40 years for its publication. For this reason many of the chapters have been re-used in other books and if you are familiar with Böll the one or the other scene or description may appear familiar. All the important themes of Böll’s work can already be found here. Criticism of post-war Catholicism, compassion with those who have nothing, with those who suffer. His books often circle around the same elements, motives and themes and although he doesn’t always use the same style, this gives the impression of a very organic work that, read in its entirety, gives an excellent panorama of Post-war Germany.

The Silent Angel is one of the most important works of the so-called “Trümmerliteratur” (the literature of the ruins). The story as such can be told in a few sentences. It’s May 8 1945. Hans, a deserter, returns from the war without a passport. He tries to find the woman of a comrade who died instead of him. While walking the bombed and destroyed city he meets a woman who lives in an appartment in a house that is almost a ruin. He feels a strong connection to her and asks her if he can stay with her. She has lost her baby in an air raid, his wife has died as well and so, like two castaways, they are stranded together in this apartment. At first they both envy those who died but slowly they find their way back to love, hope and some kind of livable future.

It isn’t said but we know that the city which is described is Köln, Böll’s hometown. The description of the despair of the people, how tired they are physically and psychologically is impressive. The way he depicts their struggle to find bread, their fight to survive in those ruins is powerful. There is one scene in which Hans tries to visit someone and to walk a distance which used to take him ten minutes, he takes an hour because of  all the debris and the rubble. As I said before, Catholicism is an important theme in Böll’s work and in this novel, in which the greed of some Catholics is shown in all its ugliness, the description of the bombed churches becomes a very significant additional meaning.

What impressed me the most apart from the descriptions of the ruined city is how tired these people are. They spend days and days on end in their beds, staring at their walls. Finding something to eat, moving about the city, coming to terms with was has happened, takes an unimaginable effort, drains them of all their energy. All they have left is exhaustion.

This must sound very depressing but Böll isn’t only a writer of despair. He describes hopelessness but his characters overcome it, they find hope and the courage to go on living. The negative people have their positive counterparts. The greedy Dr. Fischer who doesn’t care for anything but money and for whom Catholic artifacts are just collectible items finds his counterpart in the gentle priest who helps Hans. The priest is the embodiment of a pure, compassionate Catholicism.

I was wondering while reading The Silent Angel whether I thought it was well written. I think he could have improved the structure, some passages read like short stories, some elements could have been left out, all in all it feels a bit loose at times which isn’t the case in his later work. His later novels are much more condensed but Böll has a gift for description which is rare. And he represents a rare model of moral integrity, he is an author who wrote for those who have nothing, who tried to unmask hypocrisy and uncover everything that was fake and phony in post-war Germany. I don’t know all that many authors who are so humane.

I have read The Silent Angel before. It isn’t my favourite Böll novel but since it’s an excellent example of “Trümmerliteratur” it seemed a great choice for the readalong. I’m very interested to know what others thought of this book.

Other reviews

Christina (Ardent Reader)

Danielle (A Work in Progress)

Fay (Read, Ramble)

Lizzy (Lizzy’s Literary Life)

Rise (in lieu of a field guide)

Tony (Tony’s Reading List)

Literature and War Readalong November 2011 Meets German Literature Month: The Silent Angel by Heinrich Böll

Posted in Books, German Literature, German Novel by

I’m not sure all those who follow me for the Literature and War Readalong did notice that there was a change of title. It just didn’t feel right to read an American author depicting the Civil War during German Literature Month. This means The Killer Angels are postponed (?).

The choice for this month’s readalong is Heinrich Böll’s The Silent Angel aka Der Engel schwieg. This novel, by my favourite German writer, is a unique book. I will explore this in more detail in Thursday’s post on Sebald’s Luftkrieg und Literatur aka On the Natural History of Destruction.

Here’s the blurb for Silent Angel

The first novel by the Nobel prize winner, never previously published. Written at the end of the Second World War it describes the death and destruction faced by the people of a city ravaged by war.

The readalong is not taking place on Friday but on Saturday 26 November. Anyone who wants to participate just leave a link in the comments section of my post, I will then add it to my post. Those who have no blogs are welcome to leave longer comments or send me an e-mail with their thoughts before Saturday and I will add them to my post. Should anyone prefer questions instead of freestyle, let me know. I could send out questions but give me time until Wednesday 23 November.

Watch out for Wednesday’s giveaway…

Beryl Bainbridge: The Dressmaker (1973)

Posted in Books, Novel by

Wartime Liverpool is a place of ration books and jobs in munitions factories. Rita, living with her two aunts Nellie and Margo, is emotionally naive and withdrawn. When she meets Ira, a GI, at a neighbour’s party she falls in love almost as much with the idea of life as a GI bride as with the man himself. But Nellie and Margo are not so blind …

Guy’s recent review of the Girl in the Polka Dot Dress (you can find it here) put me in the mood to read Beryl Bainbridge who had been on my radar and reading pile for a while. Initially I didn’t even want to buy The Dressmaker as the cover looked like some soppy romance. I couldn’t have been more wrong. This is a fantastic book. It’s so fantastic that I don’t know how to describe her writing. One would have to quote her extensively to convey a good feeling for her art.

While I was reading the book I was alternatingly thinking three things: “Why did I not discover her earlier?”, I” want to write like her”, “How did she do that?”

The Dressmaker is set in wartime Liverpool, a place and time that interests me a lot. Young Rita lives with her two aunts, Marge and Nellie. Her mother died and her father, whom she calls Uncle Jack, a butcher,  was unable to cope and raise a girl on his own. That’s the reason why she finished living with her two spinsterly sisters. Nellie, who is a dressmaker, is a joyless woman. She only lives for the day when she can finally follow her own mother to the grave. She is very domineering and her cheerless ways crush her sister as much as her niece. She has turned polishing and looking after her mother’s furniture into a cult. The lifeless objects mean more to her than her fellow human beings. Marge is quite different. She was married but her husband died, she also seems to have affairs that Jack and Nellie try to crush as soon as they start. Still she is lively and tries to enjoy life as much as the other two allow it. Rita is  a very naive young girl, very cheerless as well and full of sentimental, romantic and unrealistic ideas. When she meets Ira, a young GI, she has all sorts of pictures and dreams in her mind but none matches reality.

Interestingly the novel starts at the end but we do not know that really until we finish the book.

Afterwards she went through into the little front room, the tape measure still dangling about her neck, and allowed herself a glass of port. And in the dark she wiped at the surface of the polished sideboard with the edge of her flowered pinny in case the bottle had left a ring.

Nothing is like it seems in this novel. That may not be an unusual premiss but what is unusual is the way Bainbridge provides information. She can describe a scene leaving out an important detail that she will give much later. This makes you feel as if you were discovering all sorts of things while reading. She would never give you the whole picture of any situation or a person right away. Reading her is like being sprayed with cool water every few minutes. It will keep you attentive, awake and alert the whole time.

Just like situations and characters are only understood completely after we have read most of the novel, the story and its ending are only fully grasped at the end.

Besides this very wonderful and unusual story telling, she touches on so many themes. It’s so accurate how she portrays the way those young GI’s were received in England, enthusiastic by the women and with a lot of jealousy by the men as they were “overpaid, oversexed and over here”, as they said. Economically they were so much better off than the British, it must have been quite painful for many men. There is a lot of prejudice but at the same time they are also idealized. The way young Rita felt was quite typical too.

She was mad for the way he said “dawg”, like he was a movie star, larger than life.

Of course he isn’t anyone famous or important and  doesn’t even come from a rich family as Rita assumes or hopes. Without being aware of it, Rita would probably have fallen for any man who would have given her the idea of escaping her oppressing situation. She is not only living in a cheerless but in a highly dysfunctional environment and under the surface a lot of things are smoldering. Repressed sexuality and joy are but a few results of the upbringing Nellie, Marge and Jack had to endure as children and are now passing on to their daughter and niece.

Bainbridge offers accomplished writing paired with an engrossing story that culminates in a surprising ending. If you haven’t read her, I can only urge you to rush and get one of her novels. If you have read her, I’m sure, you know what I’m talking about. I very rarely feel the urge to read all of someone’s novels. It does happen though. It just did.

After Guy’s suggestion I already ordered another one, An Awfully Big Adventure. Do you have any other recommendations?

Elsa Morante: La Storia – History (1974) Literature and War Readalong August 2011

Posted in Books, Italy, Novel by

History was written nearly 3 decades after Morante spent a year hiding from the Germans in remote farming villages in the mountains south of Rome. There she witnessed the full impact of the war and first formed the ambition to write an account of what history does when it reaches the realm of ordinary people struggling for life and bread.

La Storia aka History is the last WWII centered book of this readalong. It’s also the most ambitious, starting before the war and ending just a few years after. It describes in minute details how the schoolteacher Ida Mancuso, her two sons and the people to whom they are connected are affected by the war. La Storia looks in great detail into the impact of war on civilians. In telling this ordinary woman’s daily life we see how precariously civilians live during a war. The constant bombing, the fear, the loss of the houses or apartments, of friends and the jobs, the lack of food and clothes, rape and brutality, fear of being transpotred to a camp, all this together is part of everyday life. What civilians endure is no less harrowing than what happens on the battlefields.

Summarizing this vast canvas of a novel that is driven forward by ebullient storytelling would be quite a challenge, that is why I decided to highlight a few points.

History starts in 19** and ends …. 19**, but the core chapters focus on the years from 1941 to 1947. Before each chapter we find detailed accounts of all the important historical facts of those years. Reading this overpowered me and that was probably the aim. One horrible event follows after another and each and every single country participated in one awful event or the other. It’s a mad circle, a maelstrom that sweeps along everything and everyone and whose impact shapes, distorts and changes the life of normal people who are unable to escape this crazy frenzy.

Following the accounts of History’s furious rage, we read about the simple, childlike Ida, whose mother was Jewish. This fact fills her with constant anxiety all through the novel and even pushes her to do crazy and dangerous things. Ida is a widowed schoolteacher, the older of her boys, Nino, is a foolhardy opportunist, while the other one, Useppe, is the child she conceived when she was raped by a German soldier at the beginning of the war. In the early chapters of the novel Ida lives in modest circumstances but she has an apartment and enough food. When the war breaks out and finally comes to Rome, their house is bombed and she must flee to the countryside where she and Useppe, the little one, live in one room together with numerous other people.

Ida’s older son Nino first joins the fascist forces, later changes over to the partisans and finally becomes a criminal after the war. His “career” seems somewhat typical and I found that in creating a character like this Morante managed to capture a lot that is wrong in Italy. Opportunism and corruption are everywhere.

Focusing on Ida, we witness the ordeal of the “ordinary people”, how much they had to endure. The hunger is unspeakable. What they have to eat is hardly imaginable. Grass, cats, rats, anything. Being homeless and having no clothes is horrible. Having to fight or steal for just a little bit of bread is hard to imagine. It’s a truly harrowing account.

One of the most interesting details is the narrator. Who tells this story? To whom belongs this voice that is audible at any time, that speaks to us directly and from the heart of this novel?  Is it History speaking to us? It seems to be, as the way Morante describes people, animals and things seems to signify that everything is animated. So why not History itself? History is such a force, it seems as if it has become a being driven to destroy.

What I loved about this novel is that everyone has a voice. Useppe is as much a person as are his dogs Blitz or Bella. Their thoughts and feelings are rendered in great detail. I think in doing so she manages to emphasize that in a war everyone is equal, everyone is threatened. I also liked the detailed in the descriptions, the exuberant storytelling.

Despite all the positive aspects I also had a few problems with the novel, especially at the beginning. I didn’t like Ida. I know, it will sound mean, but she was too simple for me. She isn’t very introspective, she is almost a simpleton, still she is touching and the tragedies she endures moved me. I understand Morante’s choice for a character like this but I didn’t always enjoy it.

While reading this novel I found myself smiling a lot. Useppe’s and his dog’s thoughts are so charming in their naivety. The end of this novel moved me a lot. Without giving away too much, I can tell that it showed that there are far more victims in wars than winners, that wars still impact people long after they have ended and that history doesn’t spare anyone. There is no escaping this force that wreaks havoc in human lives.

Before closing I would like to ask a question of anyone who might have read this novel, now or at another point in time: Isn’t it dangerous to treat History like a being? Isn’t this blurring the fact that History isn’t an undefined, independent force but, in the end, it is people who harm other people?

Other reviews:

*****

History was the eight book in the Literature and War Readalong. The next one will be Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried. Discussion starts on Friday September 30, 2011 .