Everyone Brave is Forgiven/Chris Cleave
This book came recommended on A Good Read.
Presenter Harriet Gilbert opined that it’s essentially two novels – one a plotted novel – and the other a World War Two account of the Blitz in London and the travails of Malta.
Of the two elements “the plot” is, in my own view, much the better.
Its epicentre is Mary North, the beautiful daughter of an MP, who does her bit by immediately enlisting once war is declared.
She is given a teacher’s job and tasked with the evacuation of schoolchildren.
She forms an attachment to Zachary, the son of a music hall minstrel. Mary’s boss – Tom Shaw – falls for her, but clearly she prefers his best friend Alistair Heath who commands a battery regiment in Malta. Much happens to Mary: Tom dies, she nearly drowns after joining the ambulance service, her mother is appalled by her relationship with Zachary and letters from Alistair get lost at sea.
The early days of the Blitz were scary with invasion imminent and the German army seemingly invincible.
Somehow Britain struggled through.
Malta, which occupied a place of great strategic importance in the Mediterranean and was bombed to smithereens by the Luftwaffe, also suffered as the island was starved
The weakness of the novel is the mindset of Cleave, a Guardian journalist.
He fails to identify the crucial tensions about Britain and Malta. It was less of a case of the Establishment being racist than having to make a binary choice between fascism and Bolshevism – the former resulting in keeping their land, traditions and privileges.
As for Malta, its inhabitants were/are Catholic, whilst the occupying British army was Protestant.
This was brought home in that superb film Malta Story where the officer (played by Alec Guineas) falls for a Maltese Catholic (Flora Robson).
Cleave does not once mention Churchill nor the Catholic/Anglican tension. His account is based on the journal of his grandfather, a serving officer.
