Louis the ludicrous
An old-fashioned and unconvincing novel reads like absurd and unintentional parody.
The 1920s and 1930s are ripe with fictional potential and Louis de Bernières appears to have assembled some promising ingredients: former flying ace Daniel and his wife Rosie moving to Ceylon to revive a faltering marriage; the lives of her variously unusual sisters back in England; his alcoholic brother; the rising power of Hitler. Sadly, the result is not at all appetising. It has clearly been a long time since Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. If this novel did not have a famous name on its cover, would it – should it – have been published?
It is weirdly old-fashioned and unconvincing. Perhaps in order to convey the right period flavour, the author has made most of the cast sound as though they’ve just wandered off the set of Brief Encounter. The effect is parodic and, in the case of sister Sophie’s infantile upper-class cuteness, absurd. The loyal, heart-of-gold working-class personalities are just as embarrassingly stereotypical and the attempt at evoking a lesbian Bloomsbury relationship is most peculiar, as is the odd section set in Nazi Germany.
De Bernières regularly resorts to bouts of oddly perfunctory explaining and telling, rather than properly developing his characters, who remain wooden and impossible to care about. The storyline is clichéd and melodramatic and the narrative structure jumpy and awkward, trying to cover far too great a time span in the number of pages. The attempts at conveying deep emotion are too often mawkish.
To see how family relationships in a time of violent change can be made into deeply satisfying and memorable fiction, read Elizabeth Jane Howard’s superb Cazalet Chronicles, set during and after World War II. She knew how to get it right.
SO MUCH LIFE LEFT OVER, by Louis de Bernières (Harvill Secker, $37)