This is my review of All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque.

Having read and seen so many books and films about war, I made the mistake of expecting this to have little to add apart from the different perspective of a First World War soldier on the German front. Written in the 1920s by a young journalist who fictionalises his own experiences of the futile lunacy of war, it soon proved to me its status as a classic.

What marks it out is the combination of a whole gamut of reactions, from the MASH-like scenes of cynical survival to moving scenes portraying the psychology of survival at the front. In the opening chapter, the eighty men out of a company of a hundred and fifty who have returned alive and uninjured from the front are delighted to find that the quartermaster has not been informed in time to reduce their supplies so they have double rations for a day. A young man is dying from his wounds in a field hospital, and a friend is mainly preoccupied with laying claim to his rather fine pair of boots.

Using the present tense to give events more immediacy, the narrator Paul describes the sinister nature of the front in apparently calm periods which may be shattered with no warning by shells and gas – how to survive he must throw himself instinctively to the earth, which may protect, bury alive or claim him for ever. He must kill or be killed without emotion to stay alive, feeling his most conscious hatred for the teachers who abused their authority by urging him to enlist, or the sadistic ex-postman, now Corporal who provided his training, none of them with any realistic first-hand experience of the front. The prospect of leave seems like heaven, until Paul realises that he can no longer relate to family and acquaintances, or any aspect of his past life. He can no longer read the books he used to treasure, and his academic education now seems useless.

The narrative makes very early on the telling point which recurs at the end: the fact that young men plucked from school to the battlefield have no clear framework of work, wife or children to which to return, should they survive. They are a generation cast in limbo: “if we go back…. we shall be weary, broken-down, burnt-out, rootless and devoid of hope. No one will understand us – we are superfluous even to ourselves.”

This well-translated novel is saved from unendurable sadness by the range and frequent black humour of incidents. It is one of the most powerful pieces of anti-war writing I have ever read. The saddest aspect is that, when he wrote it, Lemarque might still hope there would be no future struggles of this sort on such a scale.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5 Stars

This is my review of Lila by Marilynne Robinson.

Marilynne Robinson's writing fascinates me. For a celebrated professional creative writer she has produced relatively few novels, of which three produced over a decade examine and rework the lives of two families in the quiet Iowan town of Gilead, each book focussing on the inner thoughts of a different character. Lila, a newcomer who has married the Reverend John Ames in his old age and borne him a son, is a minor figure in "Home" and "Gilead", but comes to the fore in this latest novel. Best read in turn with Lila last, to understand all the references, they can be treated as standalone novels.

Carried on a stream of consciousness which catches Lila's distinctive voice, we learn how she was abducted as a young child from a neglectful and possibly violent household by Doll, an itinerant casual worker. On the run for years from some real or imagined pursuer, they attach themselves to a small group who find jobs where they can in what sounds like the dustbowl America of the `30s, although the author is vague as to time and place. Despite having been barely tolerated by everyone apart from the protective Doll, Lila retains a nostalgic longing for her childhood, lived mostly out in the open, with a keen sense of nature and the seasons, and what little they all had shared in common.

By comparison, in the reverend's comfortable old house, with his kind and patient attention, she often feels lonely and reluctant to confess details of her past for fear this may turn him against her. It appears he has married her out of his own loneliness and a sense of her reflective nature, drawn to the same spiritual questions which perplex him. Perhaps he feels a desire to give practical support to a woman in need who has endured hardship through no fault of her own, outside the safe shell of his own life troubled only by self-concocted theological dilemmas. We can never be any surer about his motives than Lila, for everything is seen through her eyes. The book is full of irony: the old man never grasps that she likes to read Exekiel because its fire and brimstone images capture a sense of her own past life. He is amused by her announcement that she never wants to have a credenza in the house, not realising that this was the piece of furniture in which a whorehouse madam kept locked up the few possessions of the young women she exploited.

Since every phrase appears crafted with care, the book needs to be read slowly, rereading some sentences aloud to capture the full meaning by stressing the right word. Although it has been described as one of the saddest books imaginable, the beauty, expressiveness and wry humour of the style make the bleak aspects tolerable. Lila's pregnancy also strikes a continual optimistic beat. The mistrust of John Ames' old friend the Reverend Boughton, and likely bewildered disapproval of parishioners, held in check by respect for the old clergyman, are only hinted at in this subtlest of novels.

If I have any criticism it is over the repetition of some points, although this could be intended to convey how the mind keeps revisiting old ground. In the same way, the very muted ending could reflect the reality of most people's experience. The author's Calvinist background exerts a strong influence, which could deter readers with no biblical knowledge or belief. As an atheist who accepts that Christianity is deeply embedded in mid-west American society, I would say that this book is worth reading if you appreciate skilful writing and have an interest in psychology, how people think and interrelate, often failing to communicate, and how they come to terms with intimations of mortality and the transiency of both pleasure and pain.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5 Stars

This is my review of Waiting for Sunrise by William Boyd.

Actor son of a famous, long-dead thespian, Lysander Rief travels to Freud's Vienna to seek the advice of an English psychoanalyst on a sensitive personal problem. Since it is 1913, we know that the course of his life is about to be transformed for the worse, but before that, fate strikes a very different unexpected blow. With his fertile imagination and gift for spinning words into vivid and original descriptions or moments of farce with no apparent effort, William Boyd creates an entertaining read for the first half. He employs interesting little devices, as in the opening chapter where Lysander is introduced as he might appear to a stranger, although the next scene shows how many of the assumptions based on appearances are false. At other points, the author presents the dialogue in the form of a play, reflecting not only Lysander's employment, but also the way he and those around him are often playing a part in "real" life. The downside of this somewhat flippant, facetious approach is that at times we may not care about the characters' troubles as much as we should.

It is not until halfway through that the novel becomes the spy thriller vaunted on the front cover, and for me it is not improved in the process. At this point, the plot is too close to a Buchanish derring-do of over-complicated implausible events. I began to lose interest, but read on in the hopes of a satisfying dénouement which is in fact less surprising and "clever" than some of the twists on the way. Perhaps the strongest aspect is that Lysander is left a sad and wiser man accepting life's ambiguity, "we try to see clearly but what we see is never clear and is never going to be", one "happier with the dubious comfort of the shadows".

⭐⭐⭐ 3 Stars

This is my review of House of Ashes by Monique Roffey.

Inspired by the abortive 1990 political coup in Trinidad, about which I am now embarrassed to have registered so little, the author creates a similar drama in the fictional Caribbean island of Sans Amen. We are introduced first to the simple yet bookish and spiritual Ashes, haunted by the violent death of his freedom fighter brother in an earlier uprising. Under the influence of “The Leader”, charismatic head of a religious cult, Ashes is sucked into a plan to force concessions from the apparently corrupt and neglectful government, by occupying the main parliament building and taking hostages, including the Prime Minister.

The point of view switches between Ashes and Mrs Aspasia Garland, Minister for the Environment, and one of the more sympathetic of the hostages. In a situation which rapidly deteriorates and clearly cannot end well, the author uses her characters to explore their contrasting attitudes, the different experiences which have shaped them including colonisation, their developing perception of events and the way they handle the psychological trauma of a siege.

This reminds me strongly of another highly praised novel about a hostage-taking in a developing country, “Bel Canto”, yet I think “The House of Ashes” is technically superior in being more realistic and focussed on the complex issues of power, inequality and motivation without getting side-tracked into somewhat sentimental romances. On the other hand, what has the makings of an outstanding novel is undermined for me by the author’s tendency to repeat and over-labour points. It would have been much more powerful to have finished at the end of Part V with at most a brief epilogue, that is, omitting the final section, entitled “V1 L’Anse Verte 23 Years Later”. It is as if Monique Roffey is so absorbed in her characters that she cannot resist continuing to supply and analyse details long after the reader should have been left to reflect and reach his or her own conclusions. A minor irritant for me is the overuse of the West Indian term “steupsing”, the tendency to make a noise by sucking in air to express annoyance and derision. Yet perhaps this, and the patois which I enjoyed, give the story greater authenticity, demonstrating Roffey's genuine deep firsthand knowledge of life in Trinidad. Certainly, she creates vivid images of the dusty rundown city, the lush vegetation and Leatherback turtles dragging themselves up onto remote beaches to lay their myriads of eggs – from which most of the hatchlings are doomed to die in the struggle to survive.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars