Sad, real insight into imperfect love
At the outset of Everyone Brave is Forgiven, the latest from bestselling novelist Chris Cleave ( Gold, Little Bee), I found myself wondering when the action was going to begin. And then — the first bomb hit and I looked up to make sure the walls of my home were still standing. And I realized that Cleave had lulled me into the exact sort of beleaguered calm Londoners felt until Sept. 7, 1940, the day the blitz began. I was as shaken by something I knew was coming as I believe it is possible to be.
Within this bomb-assaulted London is Mary North, the plucky daughter of a politician who manages to keep open a school for the few children not evacuated to the countryside: the ones who are afflicted, or who are the wrong colour, the ones no one believes are important to protect. Tom, the school principal and Mary’s lover, barely tolerates her championing of these forgotten waifs. But eventually, for what it’s worth, he sees it her way.
Tom is besotted, but it is Alistair, his roommate and a soldier posted in Malta, who shares the deepest connection with Mary. His contact with her keeps him alive. And ultimately, her belief that he will survive keeps her from falling off the face of the Earth too, as the war slowly strips away all her layers and leaves her more vulnerable than any person should be.
This is a story about love, but not the cinematic kind many wartime romances offer. Instead, it is a story about what violence and uncertainty can take away, and what remains in its place. Love, yes, but an altered kind of love, a love that must hobble along with missing limbs and PTSD.
Love is never perfect, though — and the belief that it is supposed to be can deliver fatal blows. Cleave knows this. His observations on love are not breathless or starry-eyed. They are sad and real. Marissa Stapley is a bestselling Canadian author. Her second novel, Things To Do When It’s Raining, will be released in February 2017.