There are not superlatives enough to convey how brilliant this book is. Beautifully written, skilfully crafted, and completely compelling.

I would never have read this had it not been from a push from a trusted bibliophile. I did not love Little Bee, so was not inclined to pick up another Chris Cleave book.
Anyway. This is a beautifully written book with characters that I genuinely cared about.
Historical fiction slash romance in WWII...again, not something I would've picked up on my own, but so good.

Had some issues with it, got sucked in though in the second half or maybe last third. Impactful visuals of what it might have been like in Malta and London during that brutal time.

I don't know what it says about me, but WWII is a favourite setting. I have read many novels set during this time, but there was so much more to experience in Everyone Brave is Forgiven. Set in London and Malta it is a story of a well to do young woman and her war work as a teacher and ambulance driver, and a young man stationed in Malta. It is about strength, weakness, resilience, prejudice, terrible loss and a fragile hope. In no way sentimental or trite, I found this book deeply moving and enjoyable.

What a great surprise this book is. I'm not the biggest fan of Little Bee, so I went into this book nervous. But it's turned out to be one of my favorites of 2016. The dialogue is witty and fleet, the characters are complex and vibrant, and the plot is presented in the stark yet emotional tone that war conjures, and which is often so difficult for fiction authors to master. 5 stars. Really great.

Little Bee, Incendiary, and Gold - Cleave's three previous novels, all of which I loved. So I was very much looking forward to reading this latest from Mr Cleave. But I should have known it was too good to be true! It is not that this is a terrible novel, or badly written, it is just that it hasn't hit me like the earlier books have, especially Little Bee. Not that these are perfect either: you don't have to google too much on any of these titles to find numerous criticisms and average ratings. But I loved them and loved the emotional response they stirred in me, yes all three. So it has been very disappointing while reading this to not have that emotional connection, page by page waiting for it, sometimes it almost being there, and then not. I felt detached from the characters, from the plot, from the relationships and I don't think it is just me, as numerous other reviewers have also expressed disappointment. I think if you had not read any of the previous three novels, then you may find this a great book, because there are many good points about it. Just not for me this time round.

The storyline is good - beginning of WWII, set in London. Mary North is a young woman from a well off and privileged family. She desperately wants to do something useful now that war has started so she volunteers to be a teacher. The evacuation of children from London renders her useless until she finds out that special needs children, those with significant health issues and black children are to remain in London. So she resolves to stay and continue to teach these unwanted children. This causes major issues with her parents, her father being a senior government politician, in line for a cabinet posting. Tom Shaw is a young man, who has an important role in education administration which is where he meets Mary. He falls madly in love with her, and this forms a central line to the plot. His best friend is Alistair who is an art curator with the Tate Gallery. He volunteers and has what amounts to a truly awful war, involved in Dunkirk and that chaos and then stuck on Malta while it is under siege from the Germans. The story weaves around these three, as well as Mary's young black student Zachary.

So there is plenty of scope here for a great novel - plenty of action with the war both in Europe and the dreadful air raids on London, the intensity of relationships with the never ending and ever present threat of death and loss looming by, the appalling racism demonstrated by Londoners to young Zachary and black people in general, the beauty and starkness of Malta - a place I have always wanted to go to. There is some amazing writing, especially about the bombing raids on London, their effects on the psyche of the residents, and I did like the writing about being holed up in a hopeless situation on Malta. But despite all this, it just does not hold together at all well. Maybe I was expecting too much...I don't know.....3*

I was lucky enough to win this book in a Goodreads Competition, but that’s not why I read it. Cleave is a highly regarded writer as you can see by the ratings of his books, and though this is the first of his I’d read, it won’t be the last.

His prose is delicious; original and lyrical : 25: Along the line of the Thames, they were testing a flock of miniature zeppelins. Tethered on cables…the balloons’ snub noses swung left and right in the fickle breeze, giving them the anxious air of compasses abandoned by north…

Characters are rendered in all their fallibility and self belief or fears, their dreams and disappointments. And then they are changed by the outrageous challenges of the landscape of war –the experience is told in parallel with Mary’s life in London during the siege, and through Alistair’s eyes as a soldier.

Mary embarks on a doomed affair with Tom, only to fall in love with his friend Alistair, and this brings the relationship with Tom towards an ending, which Tom faces with grace and a deep awareness of his good fortune in having attracted Mary’s attention at all, due to the dearth of men still back home in London.

The delightfulness of the writing, and the humour of the dialogue would be enough to bring a brightness and enjoyment to the reading of the story, even if not so much action was taking place. Here’s Tom making a jar of jam which figures strongly as a symbol of plenty, home and friendship to Alistair on his journey through the war: 32: “He closed his eyes and tasted it…The sweetness of the blackberries revealed itself incompletely, changing and deepening until it dissolved from the back of the tongue with the maddening hint of a greater remainder. He was left with a question he could not phrase, and a galaxy of tiny seeds that crackled in his mouth like bereaved punctuation..”

But plenty is going on; both at home and abroad, and it is the most interesting rendering of the experiences of those waiting out the war at home that I’ve read. Alistair finds he can’t fit in when he returns on leave to London..102: …noon by his watch – but no bells struck. The bells were blanketed in their belfries…There was a new way of moving that he could not seem to weave himself into. The city was in a gasping hurry, but it wasn’t the old surge of rush hour, where the great press of bodies used to flow together like a tide. Now everyone seemed to be moving at cross purposes. ..He couldn’t thread himself through the new crowds. There were so many people, all out of phase. It seemed to him that the un-rung hours had lost their habit of strict separation and begun to overlap, to slide over each other like the scales of something serpentine and recursive. Day shifts and night shifts and swing shifts jostled and perplexed him, and as he ran his errands..it seemed that whatever bus he caught was full of wan girls in overalls. They were as likely to be coming from work as going to it. He tried to talk with them, but apparently the language had changed..”

From the Traffic.. clotting in the streets, the invulnerability of lovers feeling that their love has remade the world, and that all that happens in the new day happens because they have caused it. – Cleave slides with ease into the psychology of every situation he describes, and the perspective is new and fascinating. Alistair, damaged by the war, is not a shell shocked stereotypical sensitive – he is a brave and loyal officer with a moral strength and a sense of humour in times of extremis, who finds the randomness and ubiquity of death has worn him down to the point of losing interest in his own welfare, or belief in the life he thought he had before the war, or it’s (and his) potential to return to life should the war ever end.
(SPOILER)

Once they do get back together, at the end of the war, Mary has permanent nerve damage to her leg and Alistair lacks his right arm, and all the anticipation of their final reunion falls victim to inflated expectations: 424: As they walked down the embankment Mary’s mood – which had lifted for a moment – began to sink again. Alistair could only take her arm with his left - and since her left side was the one needing support, they tended to separate. The awkwardness leached into the silence between them. The Thames, when they reached it, was no help. With its silvered crests in the soft night air it should have seemed dear, but she saw the slick blackness of the troughs, and felt on her skin the sobering drop in temperature….Alistair went ahead into the galleries and Mary hung back, poking at the mess with her toe. It seemed redundant to follow him, now that he had seen her as she was. She had only ever been an imprint in the London clay, of inherited money and looks. How pleased she had been with the impression she made, thinking it her own. But there were thousands of her stamp, and thousands more would come, each imagining they escaped the pattern. There would be countless small rebellions, numberless mothers defied..

Cleave’s characters are smart and witty, self conscious and self aware, they break the moulds of their typical situations with enough individuality of perspective to render their experiences with a realism that makes it impossible for the reader not to invest heavily in their futures.




 


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Having heard an interview with the author I thought this was a story worth following up. I appreciated the insights into various facets of living through the war both in England and with the Malta bombardment but the story as a whole didn't quite gel. There seemed to be moments of clarity in the story telling but then it seemed like the whole part about the disenfranchised children Mary took under her wing just got left aside or forgotten. Ultimately I felt that there was an effort to tell too many stories in one.

Whew. Read this book. That is all.

Everyone brave is forgiven.
Everyone forgiven is brave.

I do love that. This is a story based on a love story, about love and not love, war, race, hatred and its enduring place in the world. I learned things, too, and that is always a good thing, about minstrelry in London, about the Blitz, about Malta, where I always thought of sun and learned about starvation.

This novel's title is spot on. Bravery is required and so is forgiveness. It is WWII in England and the characters, Mary, Tom, Alastair, and Hilda are very bright young things whose lives are changed forever. Love is created in all its glory in romance, friendship, and family. Defeat is tragic as the war ravages everyone physically, mentally and emotionally. Chris Cleave writes an amazingly authentic story about a time that most of us never knew. The details of war in London and on the island of Malta are fine tuned and bring us the utter and complete savagery of it all, lest we forget what war truly means to those in it and around it. I want to say it is a love story but it is more a war story where love may or may not survive.

Copy received courtesy of NetGalley.