Laughter and tears as flying ace picks up the post-war pieces
SO MUCH LIFE LEFT OVER
by Louis de Bernières Harvill Secker, £16.99 THE latest novel from Louis de Bernières, author of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, is in effect a sequel to 2015’s The Dust That Falls From Dreams, with the same cast of both attractive and maddening characters. But you don’t need to have read the first book to enjoy the second.
The earlier novel opened during the golden days of Edwardian England and carried us through the tragedy of the First World War. This sequel explores how the characters cope in their very different ways with the post-war world.
Flying ace and war hero Daniel Pitt has become a tea planter in Ceylon, attempting to start a new life with his wife Rosie and their small daughter Esther.
Although Daniel suffers “from the accidie [apathy] of not being at war”, he loves Ceylon and has great plans for the future. But the birth of a stillborn son derails a marriage which was built on sand since Rosie never recovered from the
death of her previous fiancé during the war.
After another son, Bertie, is born, Rosie’s family is complete and she believes that sex with her husband is no longer necessary.
She drives a wedge between Daniel and the children and insists on the family returning to England. Cut adrift, Daniel finds love elsewhere but Rosie will not divorce him so no relationship lasts.
He goes to Germany to work with two German engineers whom he saved during the First World War only to find that they have become Nazis. The future looks bleak.
The action unfolds in short chapters, many seen through Daniel’s eyes, and there are first-hand insights from Rosie, who makes herself as unhappy as she has made Daniel.
Rosie’s sisters and their unusual lifestyles also have brief moments in the spotlight and the effect is to make the novel feel like linked short stories.
De Bernières enjoys playing with the novel form and has fun when the Pitts meet Dr Iannis from Captain Corelli’s Mandolin on their voyage home.
He balances humour and tragedy in a novel that succeeds largely because Daniel is such a compelling and sympathetic character.