Susan Hill – Strange Meeting

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Book Review, First World War, Strange Meeting, Susan Hill

A beautifully written story about male friendships and the First World War

Susan Hill, almost always a writer whose fictional books deal with ethical or philosophical issues as well as whatever else she is writing about, writes in three main styles, a couple of which are ‘genre fiction’ Firstly, books with a supernatural, often gothic element – most famous of which was Woman In Black – book, then stage play, TV version, radio play, then film – I’m sure there is a tee shirt too! Then there is her incarnation as a crime writer, with the Simon Serrailler series (number 8 is the latest). Finally, there are literary fiction books which are outside a genre, though she is always a writer of literary fiction, whether or not her writing also fits within genre.

Strange Meeting belongs to this third category. Though of course particularly apposite in this hundredth year anniversary of the outbreak of the First War, Hill’s book about two soldiers in that war, and the deep friendship which develops between them, was published some forty years ago.

It is a short, quietly powerful read. The focus is on the two central characters, young officers. John Hilliard comes from a typically correct, emotionally repressed background, and is isolated, restrained and unable to be easy with his fellows. David Barton is one of the golden ones, a young man of great charm, ease and likeability, with a natural warmth which pleases everyone he meets. He comes from an unusual family, where such ability to express delight, and to not keep a stiffened lip, is responsible for his sunniness.

The two develop a friendship and love for each other – though whether that love is platonic or sexual is never mentioned – and in many ways Hill is respectful of a time and place where the strong expression of friendship may or may not mean either overt or covert sexual feelings. (There of course are biblical echoes in the forenames of the two young men)

The relationship, and the changes which the horrors of the trenches visit upon the soldiers themselves, their relationships with their families and the wider society back home who are still caught up in early jingoism, and a belief that the way will be a short push and then over, are beautifully drawn

Given the facts of that war, there can only be 4 possible outcomes to this story, only one of which would be less plausible than the other three. In a sense the story of ‘what happens’ is not the point of the book – which is the relationship, the characters, and the experience of the men in that war, and their estrangement, by and large, from an ignorant public at home, who, not having experienced the horrors themselves, cannot fully understand the terrible changes which happen when such hell is engaged with.

Cheshire Regiment trench Somme 1916 From the collections of the Imperial War Museum. Wiki Commons

Immediately, he was conscious of his own flesh, of the nerves beneath the skin, of the bone and muscle which obeyed him: clench, unclench, move this finer, bend that. His hands looked huge and pale under the water. He had never realised before how much he cared about his own body, simply because it was so familiar, because he knew better than he knew anything every shape and crease of it, the exact width of knuckle, the flatness of his fingernails. So that, when he imagined his hand torn off at the wrist it was not the thought of the pain which so terrified him, but simply the loss of a part of himself, something he had always known. He was his hand – and his legs and neck, ribs and groin

My only cavil with the book is the full and frank letters which Barton writes to his family. Officers of course censored the letters home which the ‘other ranks’ sent, but I found myself working hard to suspend a sense that Barton’s letters would surely have been censored by those of higher rank, and if not, as Hilliard was party to the letters Barton sent and received, that he, as a very correct man, would have intervened and censored the truths which Barton was telling his family about the awful futility of the war.

However – why the present front cover photo for the Kindle edition shows a group of remarkably modern squaddies is a bit of an artist and publicist goof I would have thought!

Strange Meeting Amazon UK
Strange Meeting Amazon USA

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W. Somerset Maugham – Ashenden

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Ashenden, Book Review, Espionage, First World War, Spy Stories, W. Somerset Maugham

A cool, clipped narrator narrating tales of espionage, spliced with sudden, deadly bleakness.

W Somerset Maugham was one of the most commercially successful British ‘popular literary authors’ of the first half of the twentieth century. His tone combined a certain waspishness, and indeed emotional coldness (no doubt a result of an emotionally cold childhood) with sudden, unexpected displays of heart. There is a cool precision in his writing, an absence of fussiness, that tells a narrative cleanly and simply, and describes character incisively.

This particular book, ‘Ashenden’ recounts the third person story of a writer, during the First World War, recruited by the Intelligence Department to go to neutral Switzerland, glean information, run Intelligence Operations, trap agents working for Germany, and later to travel to Russia on the eve of the Revolution, to prevent the Russian Revolution and to keep Russia engaged in the war on the Allied side. The book consists of short chapters in which our hero, urbane and observant, plays the espionage game with Bond like suavity (reputedly this book did exert some influence on Fleming) Though Ashenden himself is not the one who dispatches those agents who are spying for Prussia, he certainly lays the traps which will end in their executions by firing squad or dispatching by other means.

Wiki Commons, Martini Makings

What is however the real hook for the modern reader is that Maugham himself was that writer, recruited by the Intelligence Agency, sent to neutral Switzerland and to Russia, with those goals, and the stories told here are factual, ‘from his case-book, as it were, though shaped and tidied, as Maugham explains in his foreword, for ‘the purposes of fiction’ :

Fact is a poor story – teller It starts a story at haphazard, generally long before the beginning, rambles on inconsequently and tails off, leaving loose ends hanging about, without a conclusion

By all accounts, Winston Churchill asked Maugham to burn some of the stories which WERE to have appeared in this book, originally published in 1928, as they breached the Official Secrets Act.

These are beautifully constructed stories, though perhaps Maugham’s/Ashenden’s in the main rather chilly, mildly amused urbanity does tend to hold the reader also away from emotional engagement. Having said that, this is a device which then works brilliantly in the ‘wrap’ of 2 or 3 of the stories where Ashenden’s rather emotionally inhibited, intelligent, ironic, cultured persona temporarily reveals a sombre, bleak acknowledgement that playing the undoubted game of espionage can create collateral damage in the lives of innocents. The story called ‘The Hairless Mexican’ would be an excellent fictional story, but the suspicion it may not be completely fiction delivers the killer punch to the reader.

Maugham’s disciplined writing, refusing to emote, merely displaying an event dispassionately, without comment, letting the reader make the judgement, gives the kick to the solar plexus. I think it is the uneasy knowledge that these stories are not really quite fiction, which is responsible for that kick

Ashenden Amazon UK
Ashenden Amazon USA

Marcus Sedgwick – The Foreshadowing

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Book Review, First World War, Marcus Sedgwick, The Foreshadowing, Young Adult Fiction

Beautiful weaving of myth and history

Marcus Sedgwick is a wonderful and layered writer, mainly for children and young adults, though he recently wrote a book very much for adults, with an interesting, unformulaic take on the vampire archetype, nothing at all like the rash of same old same old clonal dreary teeth and jugular inevitability A Love Like Blood

Much of Sedgwick’s writing inhabits a territory which is a kind of marriage between historical event, transposed into fiction, and the connection to myth and fairy tale. He opens out the enduring nature of archetype.

This story of the First World War, and the journey of a young woman who becomes a VAD, and then goes to the front to search for her brother, is a remarkably clear handling of political viewpoints as they changed throughout the war; most particularly the split between a ‘patriotic’ population at home, who thought the war a good thing, and how the reality of the carnage affected the soldiers. Sedgwick beautifully gets under the skin of his intelligent and likeable central character, and the beginning of change for a generation of young women who were beginning to see their lives might be more than marriage and motherhood.

         Flicr, Commons, What’s That Picture – WW1 Hospital Ward Postcard

Sedgwick gives his account extra depth and resonance through linking the protagonist with Cassandra – hence the title of the book, as Cassandra possessed the ability to perceive tragic events, but her vision was a curse to her, as no-one believed her, and she was spurned and outcast for her abilities. Sasha, Sedgwick’s central character, also has these ‘gifts’ and like Cassandra, they are visions of a time of war and conflict. The connection reminds us of how deeply wars are ingrained in our psyche.

Sedgwick ostensibly is writing for ‘young adults’; his writing is deep and true enough to satisfy old adults as well. He reminds me so much of Alan Garner, another writer as mythic and satisfying for not yet adults and adults who have not forgotten their connection to childhood – whatever their age!

This particular book of Sedgwick’s was written some years ago – it’s not a ‘cash-in’ on the 100 year since the start of the First War, but I remembered reading this book some 6 years ago, and the 100 year since…reminded me to go back to it

The Foreshadowing Amazon UK
The Foreshadowing Amazon USA

Robert Ryan – Dead Man’s Land

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Arthur Conan Doyle, Book Review, Dead Man's Land, Dr Watson, First World War, Literary pastiche, Robert Ryan, Sherlock Holmes

Watson goes it alone in the trenches; Sherlock studies bees’ Holmes!

I enjoyed this enormously – though I did have a couple of rather – ‘hmm, I’m not quite sure of this’ considerations

The most pressing is this: Given the fact that the First War, starting 100 years ago this year STILL seems to have left its shock waves and fault lines deeply embedded in European history – so that still a fairly large percentage of UK citizens may have memories at least of a deceased grandparent, who either had stories to tell of their childhood and how daddy or uncle this or that or the great love never came back, or were even wounded themselves.

It still feels somehow too near to be married with a detecting murder mystery, however well done.

Ryan is very good at being very direct with the horror and the carnage – from both sides of the trenches, the awfulness of that war, the horrific injuries on both sides, are laid out. And I also like his good writing, strong characters, examination of all sorts of issues – attitudes to women’s suffrage, outrageous, stuffy sexism, the class bound society, the organisation of labour, radicalism, cutting edge (literally), medicine. This is a good, pacy, absorbing ‘what happens NEXT……sort of read. Except that I’m still left with a bit of unease over the reality of that awful carnage hooked up with a murder mystery. Particularly one involving Dr John Watson, the erstwhile recounter of all the Sherlock Holmes casebook stories.

Pause for the sound of Sherlockians sucking in their lips with a hiss of disfavour. Possibly.

Brett and Burke as the detective and the doctor

A better and more closely reading Sherlockian than myself will no doubt be able to verify that in one of the final (if not THE final story) when the great man retires to the Sussex Downs to pursue a bee-related hobby, the getting-on-a-bit Watson rejoins the Royal Army Medical Corps and pops over to France to do his doctoring bit and save the lives of wounded men.

In Ryan’s book, Watson becomes detective, and there are many references, and even a story line, around a dreadful falling out between Holmes and Watson who have now not spoken or communicated for some time (the subject of the fall-out being Watson’s enlisting in the first place)

Now, as far as my memory tells me, there never WAS such a hideous falling-out, and the sullying of that friendship by Ryan, unsettled me, as a travesty. Use our beloved fictional characters if you must, but keep them true to their original creator’s vision.

So……I have knocked off a star because of the two areas of unsettled, very different, snags at my sense of ‘not quite ethical literary behaviour’ .

The writing itself, and the characterisations engage, and I thought the structure of the book, using a filmic cutting device, was also effective. Ryan has a couple of story lines going on, one from the German side of the lines, one from the British, with also another cut into some events ‘back home’. Particularly in the battle field threads, he will take the reader to a cliff-hanging moment at a chapter end, but the next chapter will start with events on the other side of the lines, so you, as reader are left with two ‘what will happen nexts’ to keep you turning the pages. There are also several red herrings and teasers tossed into the salad, some of which are delicious and work very well, some of which are not quite as good, as the insertion of real characters whose real outcomes are well known, mean that some of the ‘what will happen next’ fever is reduced because the reader will know the history.

As the two stories from the lines began to coalesce, some coincidences began to seem a little too neat and inevitable, the structure a little too hastily wrapped, and I began to find this more of a story to be sat outside of, rather than strongly and intensely engaging me.

One final plus for this reader was a quartet of strong, well drawn female characters, very much representing the movement away from sweetly passive invisible Victorian womanhood.

Despite my criticisms this a book I would strongly recommend, especially to anyone who has a less queasy sense of what is, and what is not, acceptable in fiction!

Dead Man’s Land Amazon UK
Dead Man’s Land Amazon USA

Robert K. Massie – Nicholas and Alexandra

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Biography, Book Review, First World War, House of Romanov, Nicholas and Alexandra, Robert K. Massie, Russia, Russian Revolution

Everything is always more complex

This is a re-issue of a book originally published in 1967, later made into a film in 1971. Like any book, (indeed like any event) it is of its time, and of the subjectivity of its writer in its time.

Written therefore while the Cold War was still extant, it may show the fact that what we know/knew of Russia at that time will have certain aspects hidden, and also that how America itself perceived Russia will be of a certain aspect. We are all affected by the view from where we are.

Given the title of the book, the focus lies particularly upon the last Romanovs, vilified, at the time from within, just as the revolutionaries were at that time vilified from without. We all have our views to defend.

History and historical analysis must also be partial, as the historian also has a partiality.

What emerges from Massie’s interesting, rather sympathetic account of the Romanovs is a view of history which inevitably focuses on personalities in time.

Nicolas, Alexandra and their children

Massie puts the whole vastness of Russia, its mysticism, its reactionary, god-fearing backwardness in many ways, as well as the cauldron for revolution-in-reaction, under a microscope, but the Romanovs are viewed more closely. His conclusions place the haemophilia of Alexis (knowledge hidden, at the time, from the Russian population at large, who therefore had certain views about Alexandra’s coldness which perhaps may have been interpreted differently) as central to what transpired, since it placed her under the influence of Rasputin, and meant, when Nicolas was focusing on Russia at War, that Ministers were being promoted and sacked with dizzying frequency based purely on the relationship between the Minister and the Starets. He concludes history would have been vastly different without the Heir’s haemophilia. Massie’s own son was also haemophiliac, so the centrality of this may also have been filtered through the writer’s viewpoint. We all filter from where we stand.

There is a view of history which says that if these particular people had not existed at these particular times then the times itself would have thrown up others who fulfilled their exact function or place. Whilst its true that there is a culture which begets us which we, as masses, absorb, so that history can be seen as mass, rather than individual movements, it is also, surely, true that individuals do leave their mark upon history, and shape it, for good or ill.

What I found fascinating was the picking apart of the inevitable drive to the Great War, the shifting alliances which occurred between the European countries which were in part down to the alliances of blood and marriage between European rulers – and how autocracy itself is problematic, (whether the autocrat inherits his autocracy or wrests it by force of will, drive and ideology)

Russian Soldiers, Sarikam Front, World War 1

In Massie’s account the Romanovs were not the monsters painted by the Bolsheviks, who of course had good reason to foster a painting of monstrosity, rather, autocracy itself, whoever is at its head, is problematic. The brutality of the murder of the Romanovs shows a mind-set of ends-justifies-means which continued in the autocracy which came after.

History, (not to mention literature) is littered with examples of:

                                                 I am in blood
Stepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more,
Returning were as tedious as go o’er

This was a rather difficult book to read on Kindle, where (quite common with non-fiction) it becomes less easy to search an index than in a paper book. At least this is the case with my Keyboard Kindle.

Keeping up with the rapid changes of Ministerial power, and the similar struggles by members of the Duma and the holders of power amongst the various revolutionary factions became a little dizzying (as no doubt it was to live through!) Having taken in many ways a personal psychology and personality driven view of history as far as the Romanovs were concerned, I would have liked more of this individuality on ‘the other side’ which might have kept me a little clearer. But I am sure much more information exists about the great and good or not so good than about the apparatchiks of history

Nicholas and Alexandra Amazon UK
Nicholas and Alexandra Amazon USA Kindle Edition