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In Desolate Heaven
Robert Edric
Editions
| Cover |
Publisher |
ISBN Number |
Price |
Buy |
| pbk |
Anchor |
1862300127 |
£6.99 |
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Review
The setting is a Swiss spa in 1919. Elizabeth Mortlake’s brother was killed in the war, and she has brought her inconsolable widowed sister-in-law there on holiday, but instead of finding peace they find traumatised veterans. At first the characters seem to belong to a world of hotels and social graces, in which people might be expected to notice what others look like. But this is misleading, for the main characters only care for appearance where it reveals suffering: what really interest them are each other’s griefs and mental wounds, and since it is these things which animate them in the eyes of one another, it is right that it should be so for the reader too. The detail is chosen with care, and probably an ulterior motive, and it is always striking - for example the description of smoke curling round the edges of a mask worn by a man who has lost most of his face in a gas attack as he smokes a cigarette. In a novel which might have been full of flashbacks to the trenches and scenes of physical horrors, not a single shot is fired. The violence, when it happens, is not described - it is just stated, with an almost perfunctory terseness. This is the most brilliant novel I have read about the First World War. And though - perhaps because - it has the least overt violence, it is the most horrifying. - review by Johnny de Falbe
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