37/2009. Library discard, taken because Anthony Burgess blurbed it as the best novel about the war. It lived up to its billing; after getting through the first hundred pages and mastering the character list I was hooked. Like The House by the Dvina, it unfolds into balanced oppositions and poetically just endings, which some would call unimaginative but I really like as evidence of an authorial mastery of design. Definitely planning to read the prequel, The Balkan Trilogy. (Rikhardinkatu, a few years ago.)

Harriet and Guy have moved on to Egypt. Guy continues to be friends to everyone except his wife, indeed there are times when you could slap him for being so wrapped up in himself. New characters - Simon, a soldier, Angela, a greiving mother and then more hangers-on.
You don't often get to hear about how civilians got through the war, so this makes Manning pretty unique. ( )

The Levant Trilogy is, I think, better than The Balkan Trilogy. Admittedly, I'm interested in the period it covers - World War II in Egypt - because of the Salamander and Personal Landscape groups, two groups of poets and writers active during that time, which included Manning herself, Lawrence Durrell, Terence Tiller, Bernard Spencer, John Jarmain and Keith Douglas, among others. In this book, Guy Pringle remains mostly unsympathetic and Harriet Pringle still incapable of recognising what the people around her are really like. Sadly, the television adaptation Fortunes Of War didn't handle this half of the story as well as it did The Balkan Trilogy - too much was missed out. The fact that the books are better should come as no real surprise. And this might well be one of the best books I've read so far this year. ( )

Interesting read authentic feel