Alexander Baron (1) (1917–1999)
Author of The Lowlife
For other authors named Alexander Baron, see the disambiguation page.
Works by Alexander Baron
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Legal name
- Bernstein, Joseph Alexander
- Birthdate
- 1917-12-04
- Date of death
- 1999-12-06
- Gender
- male
- Occupations
- writer
- Short biography
- Alexander Baron grew up in London's East End. The son of a Jewish immigrant, he became involved in left-wing politics during the 1930s and was active in opposing the Fascism rife in the East End at the time. He joined the army in 1940, and it was his experiences in the Second World War that gave him the material for his first novel, From the City, From the Plough. Other novels explore London life and historical themes, and he also wrote Hollywood screenplays and BBC television dramas and adaptations. Carl Foreman's classic war film The Victors (1963) was based on Baron's The Human Kind. He died in 1999.
- Nationality
- UK
- Birthplace
- Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, UK
- Place of death
- London, England, UK
- Associated Place (for map)
- England, UK
Members
Reviews
An engrossing depiction of life in a battalion of ordinary British soldiers in World War Two, written soon after the war by a British ex-soldier. It is, essentially, a pseudo-memoir in novel form as Alexander Baron drew heavily from his own experiences and observations (read Sean Longden's exceptional introduction and afterword for more insight). The book is often highly-praised by war veterans who say Read this. This is what it was like." Not being someone who has experienced such things, I show more cannot vouch for this, but I have to say that nevertheless I found the battle scenes intense and horrific in a way I have never experienced before in the written word.
The prose is sparse (Baron is one of those gifted writers who has more to say in the white spaces between the lines than in the lines themselves) and it is told in a matter-of-fact way that strongly reminded me of the interviews and anecdotes given by World War Two veterans that I have often heard and read in numerous history books. There is no indulgent lyricism or high-minded language, which suits the remorseless and unsentimental, almost confessional, narrative. This is not to say that the prose is poor; it contains a number of evocative phrases - my favourite being the British soldiers watching, on the night of D-Day, the brutal enemy artillery "gun-flashes tearing the darkness apart." (pg. 121).
Baron observes the war with the cynical, unromantic eye of the honest Tommy; when the commander rouses the men in the final battle, it is not with a Shakespearean "ye lucky few" type speech, or even a regimental battle-cry, but with kicks, with yells, and above all, by setting an example to the ragged men and leading from the front. When two characters debate their duty and obligations it is not followed by outpourings of patriotism or hatred for the enemy. Rather, as one of them explains to the other, it's like when, back at home, you're told by your ma to run to the shops for a loaf. You get up and go, then come back. It's just something that has to be done (pg. 105). It's one of the most profound and unassuming (and accurate) reflections on the soldier's duty that I have ever come across.
It is a book packed with emotional power; scene after scene of raw humanity. The heartbreaking moments do not always come in battle; indeed, one of the most affecting scenes is of a choir of grateful French schoolchildren singing 'God Save the Queen' to the weary soldiers in broken English (pg. 155). But the battle scenes are the highlight, without a doubt. Though few, they made a deep impression on this reader. It is in these moments when Baron's detached yet paradoxically intimate narrative voice is at its best. Much as a seasoned soldier would, the narrative deals with death and injury in a matter-of-fact way; major characters are suddenly gone, or crippled, and the narrative quickly moves on, just as a fellow soldier on a battlefield would in passing such scenes. As I alluded to above, the final battle scene is one of the most intense scenes I have experienced in the written word, and I felt genuine heartache as the soldiers are repeatedly put through the wringer. Incoming artillery fire is considered one of the most horrific and nerve-wracking experiences that an infantry soldier can go through, and the men of the 5th Wessex, these pieces of "soft, human flesh clad only in khaki serge, with the angry splinters of steel whining among them" (pg. 176) endure it repeatedly in one of the most brutal battles of the Normandy campaign. In these moments, it is the little things that make the prose add up to more than the sum of its parts. For example, we witness the losses on the British side to the relentless artillery fire, which is "like waves sweeping away the clusters of men clinging to the mainmast of a sinking ship" in a storm (pg. 183), and Baron notes that all this is happening before the British even catch sight of the German helmets (pg. 180). He doesn't dwell on this detail, but attentive readers will notice it and find it heartbreaking.
Another powerful technique that Baron employs towards the end is that he stops using the names of his characters: we are not told who survives the battle, we are only told of "the men of the Fifth Battalion", now alarmingly depleted in number and in energy. This might sound unacceptable and off-putting to someone who has not read the book, feeling that the story may lack in resolution, but it is an extraordinarily powerful way to end. Maybe we're not told who survives because, as Longden suggests in his introduction, it is pointless - even if they did survive that battle, they probably wouldn't survive the next one. I would perhaps suggest that we're not told who survives because no one whose name we have been told has survived. It is a disturbing thought, and a truly poignant way to end the book." show less
The prose is sparse (Baron is one of those gifted writers who has more to say in the white spaces between the lines than in the lines themselves) and it is told in a matter-of-fact way that strongly reminded me of the interviews and anecdotes given by World War Two veterans that I have often heard and read in numerous history books. There is no indulgent lyricism or high-minded language, which suits the remorseless and unsentimental, almost confessional, narrative. This is not to say that the prose is poor; it contains a number of evocative phrases - my favourite being the British soldiers watching, on the night of D-Day, the brutal enemy artillery "gun-flashes tearing the darkness apart." (pg. 121).
Baron observes the war with the cynical, unromantic eye of the honest Tommy; when the commander rouses the men in the final battle, it is not with a Shakespearean "ye lucky few" type speech, or even a regimental battle-cry, but with kicks, with yells, and above all, by setting an example to the ragged men and leading from the front. When two characters debate their duty and obligations it is not followed by outpourings of patriotism or hatred for the enemy. Rather, as one of them explains to the other, it's like when, back at home, you're told by your ma to run to the shops for a loaf. You get up and go, then come back. It's just something that has to be done (pg. 105). It's one of the most profound and unassuming (and accurate) reflections on the soldier's duty that I have ever come across.
It is a book packed with emotional power; scene after scene of raw humanity. The heartbreaking moments do not always come in battle; indeed, one of the most affecting scenes is of a choir of grateful French schoolchildren singing 'God Save the Queen' to the weary soldiers in broken English (pg. 155). But the battle scenes are the highlight, without a doubt. Though few, they made a deep impression on this reader. It is in these moments when Baron's detached yet paradoxically intimate narrative voice is at its best. Much as a seasoned soldier would, the narrative deals with death and injury in a matter-of-fact way; major characters are suddenly gone, or crippled, and the narrative quickly moves on, just as a fellow soldier on a battlefield would in passing such scenes. As I alluded to above, the final battle scene is one of the most intense scenes I have experienced in the written word, and I felt genuine heartache as the soldiers are repeatedly put through the wringer. Incoming artillery fire is considered one of the most horrific and nerve-wracking experiences that an infantry soldier can go through, and the men of the 5th Wessex, these pieces of "soft, human flesh clad only in khaki serge, with the angry splinters of steel whining among them" (pg. 176) endure it repeatedly in one of the most brutal battles of the Normandy campaign. In these moments, it is the little things that make the prose add up to more than the sum of its parts. For example, we witness the losses on the British side to the relentless artillery fire, which is "like waves sweeping away the clusters of men clinging to the mainmast of a sinking ship" in a storm (pg. 183), and Baron notes that all this is happening before the British even catch sight of the German helmets (pg. 180). He doesn't dwell on this detail, but attentive readers will notice it and find it heartbreaking.
Another powerful technique that Baron employs towards the end is that he stops using the names of his characters: we are not told who survives the battle, we are only told of "the men of the Fifth Battalion", now alarmingly depleted in number and in energy. This might sound unacceptable and off-putting to someone who has not read the book, feeling that the story may lack in resolution, but it is an extraordinarily powerful way to end. Maybe we're not told who survives because, as Longden suggests in his introduction, it is pointless - even if they did survive that battle, they probably wouldn't survive the next one. I would perhaps suggest that we're not told who survives because no one whose name we have been told has survived. It is a disturbing thought, and a truly poignant way to end the book." show less
"… beneath the servility accorded to a master there is always malice." (pg. 314)
A fine example of Alexander Baron's talent and appeal, King Dido is an accomplished character-driven story with a social conscience. It is a very bleak novel – particularly in its too-abrupt ending – as it follows the rise and fall of Dido Peach, who ascends rather accidentally to prominence in the criminal underworld of his slum in the East End of London (the year is 1911). Dido is a fascinating character show more and a tragic one – as Ken Worpole's introduction notes, there is something of the Heathcliff about him (pg. 15). His rise is facilitated not by ambition but by righting wrongs done to his family, and from then on it is a combination of his pride, his family ties and his social status as one of the working-class 'scum' in the eyes of many, that eventually dooms him.
Baron takes this opportunity to comment – perceptively but never didactically – on the nature of power and influence, not least in how the powerless react to power. This can take the form of petty resistance (see the quote with which I opened this review) or bovine acceptance. The latter is where Baron's social conscience shines through. Dido is a tough but fair man, honest and simple, who just wants to do right by his family. This code of honour leads him to overthrow the local gang leader and he finds himself taking the unwanted mantle. "Dido was a law-abiding man… The fight with Ginger had been fated. He still could not question its rightness. But since then his life had not been his own." (pg. 246). His attempts to better himself and to return to a clean-living life are foiled by class prejudice, the environment in which he lives and his own lack of conviction, itself seasoned by his life of deference to those 'above' him. Baron seems to be using Dido's arc to represent the trials of all those whose lives' course is not their own to determine; when he speaks of "all the inimical forces that had driven him to the slaughter" (pg. 349), there is an empathy here for Dido's rut that would not be out-of-place in modern socially-conscious portrayals of crime-ridden neighbourhoods like The Wire.
This is heavy stuff and, as I have said, it is a bleak novel. It is almost Dickensian in style, but without that author's occasional penchant for sentimentality. Nevertheless, Baron is a gifted writer and the book never feels plodding or hectoring. In fact, it is a very smooth and easy read, helped no doubt by Baron's keen sense of character and setting. When you're reading King Dido, you feel like you live amongst these characters. But if it is character and setting that gives the book an accomplished quality, it is its sense of social compassion which gives it endurance and vitality beyond just literary craft. It is this which validates Baron not just as a wordsmith but as an artist. Towards the end of the novel, as Dido's options are slammed shut on him, he realizes that "it was fight or go under now" (pg. 274). Perhaps that was always the case: this hard-nosed assessment could be applied to all of his 'choices' in the novel. Indeed, it could be a mantra for the whole working class, who remain – in Dido's time, in Baron's time, and in ours – as the fighting classes and, sadly, the struggling classes. show less
A fine example of Alexander Baron's talent and appeal, King Dido is an accomplished character-driven story with a social conscience. It is a very bleak novel – particularly in its too-abrupt ending – as it follows the rise and fall of Dido Peach, who ascends rather accidentally to prominence in the criminal underworld of his slum in the East End of London (the year is 1911). Dido is a fascinating character show more and a tragic one – as Ken Worpole's introduction notes, there is something of the Heathcliff about him (pg. 15). His rise is facilitated not by ambition but by righting wrongs done to his family, and from then on it is a combination of his pride, his family ties and his social status as one of the working-class 'scum' in the eyes of many, that eventually dooms him.
Baron takes this opportunity to comment – perceptively but never didactically – on the nature of power and influence, not least in how the powerless react to power. This can take the form of petty resistance (see the quote with which I opened this review) or bovine acceptance. The latter is where Baron's social conscience shines through. Dido is a tough but fair man, honest and simple, who just wants to do right by his family. This code of honour leads him to overthrow the local gang leader and he finds himself taking the unwanted mantle. "Dido was a law-abiding man… The fight with Ginger had been fated. He still could not question its rightness. But since then his life had not been his own." (pg. 246). His attempts to better himself and to return to a clean-living life are foiled by class prejudice, the environment in which he lives and his own lack of conviction, itself seasoned by his life of deference to those 'above' him. Baron seems to be using Dido's arc to represent the trials of all those whose lives' course is not their own to determine; when he speaks of "all the inimical forces that had driven him to the slaughter" (pg. 349), there is an empathy here for Dido's rut that would not be out-of-place in modern socially-conscious portrayals of crime-ridden neighbourhoods like The Wire.
This is heavy stuff and, as I have said, it is a bleak novel. It is almost Dickensian in style, but without that author's occasional penchant for sentimentality. Nevertheless, Baron is a gifted writer and the book never feels plodding or hectoring. In fact, it is a very smooth and easy read, helped no doubt by Baron's keen sense of character and setting. When you're reading King Dido, you feel like you live amongst these characters. But if it is character and setting that gives the book an accomplished quality, it is its sense of social compassion which gives it endurance and vitality beyond just literary craft. It is this which validates Baron not just as a wordsmith but as an artist. Towards the end of the novel, as Dido's options are slammed shut on him, he realizes that "it was fight or go under now" (pg. 274). Perhaps that was always the case: this hard-nosed assessment could be applied to all of his 'choices' in the novel. Indeed, it could be a mantra for the whole working class, who remain – in Dido's time, in Baron's time, and in ours – as the fighting classes and, sadly, the struggling classes. show less
Although I didn't love it as I did my two previous experiences of Alexander Baron's writing - From the City, From the Plough and The Human Kind - it is fair to say that I still found There's No Home to be very fulfilling. It didn't resonate as deeply with me as those other two books, but it was still a well-crafted novel aching with humanity.
The best summary of the novel actually comes from Baron himself in the very first paragraph of the first chapter:
"This is not a story of war but of one show more of those brief interludes in war when the almost-forgotten rhythms of normal living are permitted to emerge again; and when it seeps back into the consciousness of human beings - painfully, sometimes heartbreakingly - that they are, after all, human." (pg. 1)
You see, Baron's second war novel is not really a war novel. There is no combat (though, to be fair, there would be none in The Human Kind three years later either) and it is more about human relationships. There is an old saying I remember hearing somewhere about how if you want to provide conflict and a character study in a novel, then 'throw some characters together and apply heat'. That is essentially what Baron does here: the British soldiers are billeted briefly in a Sicilian town at the end of their invasion of the island in 1943. They interact with the Italian women (and to a lesser extent, the Italian children and old men); the 'heat' applied is the war itself, and how that gloomy presence colours and overshadows all their actions.
It is hard to summarise and review exactly what it is Baron does, but as always it is fascinating to watch his characters, even when they are doing something as mundane as eating dinner. Baron is a keen observer of human behaviour and has the remarkable knack of being able to fully realise a character you care about in just one or two lines. The main plot (insofar as there is one; the novel is more of a character study than a plot-driven story) is about the love affair between Craddock and Graziella (and this is nowhere near as cliché as you might be thinking!) but the other sub-plots also carry emotional impact. I found Nella's story to be especially heartbreaking, particularly as it began in such innocence.
Above all, it is Baron's perceptiveness and maturity in writing about sexual politics during the war which is the main strength of There's No Home. Baron has always been bravely frank about this sort of thing (see some of the vignettes in The Human Kind, for example) and There's No Home is a great illustration of his willingness to provide an unfiltered account of the reality of war and of life. In From the City, From the Plough, he offered an utterly realistic depiction of combat in war; in There's No Home, he offers a similarly realistic rendering of sex and love in war. It is not a bawdy or a crude novel; it just documents with courageous frankness how people try to hold onto their humanity in such peculiar circumstances. It is this unsentimental approach to all the consequences of war which allows John L. Williams, in his great Afterword, to correctly state that the book is "about the horror of war", even though this initially seems nonsensical as it "takes place almost entirely on one small street in a Sicilian town, a long way from the front line." (pg. 270).
But even though I recognise the achievement of There's No Home, I must confess that I did find it hard to engage with on occasion. It is a very insular novel, concerned more with emotions and thoughts and feeling rather than external stimuli. This is fine, of course, and fully suited to what the novel is trying to achieve, but it is less to my tastes and means you can lose your way on occasion. Baron's prose is also rather more dense than I had come to appreciate in the other two of his works I have so far read. In my past reviews, I've made no secret of my preference for sparser prose - something akin to the 'iceberg' theory, as Hemingway called it. And there was a spare, rugged yet refined prose which I enjoyed in From the City, From the Plough and The Human Kind. But Baron does not employ this style in There's No Home (though, to be fair, it is not the kind of story that suits it) and drops it in favour of a more lyrical style that occasionally reminded me of Dickens. It is a perfectly respectable style of prose, and many readers will prefer it, but it is not always to my liking and not what I expected after my previous experiences of Baron. Of course, these are my own personal experiences from reading the novel and it seems rather churlish of me to criticise Baron's style when a different style (i.e. one closer to From the City, From the Plough) would not have been able to tell the story. It's just that Baron's change of pace meant that I didn't devour the book; I didn't love it as I did his previous books.
It should be stressed here that my only objections (small as they are) are stylistic, not of the book's substance, and even then I admit they are rather unreasonable. The novel is great, a well-written character study with an aura of profound intimacy that Baron has always excelled at. It might not have been everything I expected, and I may not have appreciated it whilst reading it as much as I should have, but it is still a fine work of art. show less
The best summary of the novel actually comes from Baron himself in the very first paragraph of the first chapter:
"This is not a story of war but of one show more of those brief interludes in war when the almost-forgotten rhythms of normal living are permitted to emerge again; and when it seeps back into the consciousness of human beings - painfully, sometimes heartbreakingly - that they are, after all, human." (pg. 1)
You see, Baron's second war novel is not really a war novel. There is no combat (though, to be fair, there would be none in The Human Kind three years later either) and it is more about human relationships. There is an old saying I remember hearing somewhere about how if you want to provide conflict and a character study in a novel, then 'throw some characters together and apply heat'. That is essentially what Baron does here: the British soldiers are billeted briefly in a Sicilian town at the end of their invasion of the island in 1943. They interact with the Italian women (and to a lesser extent, the Italian children and old men); the 'heat' applied is the war itself, and how that gloomy presence colours and overshadows all their actions.
It is hard to summarise and review exactly what it is Baron does, but as always it is fascinating to watch his characters, even when they are doing something as mundane as eating dinner. Baron is a keen observer of human behaviour and has the remarkable knack of being able to fully realise a character you care about in just one or two lines. The main plot (insofar as there is one; the novel is more of a character study than a plot-driven story) is about the love affair between Craddock and Graziella (and this is nowhere near as cliché as you might be thinking!) but the other sub-plots also carry emotional impact. I found Nella's story to be especially heartbreaking, particularly as it began in such innocence.
Above all, it is Baron's perceptiveness and maturity in writing about sexual politics during the war which is the main strength of There's No Home. Baron has always been bravely frank about this sort of thing (see some of the vignettes in The Human Kind, for example) and There's No Home is a great illustration of his willingness to provide an unfiltered account of the reality of war and of life. In From the City, From the Plough, he offered an utterly realistic depiction of combat in war; in There's No Home, he offers a similarly realistic rendering of sex and love in war. It is not a bawdy or a crude novel; it just documents with courageous frankness how people try to hold onto their humanity in such peculiar circumstances. It is this unsentimental approach to all the consequences of war which allows John L. Williams, in his great Afterword, to correctly state that the book is "about the horror of war", even though this initially seems nonsensical as it "takes place almost entirely on one small street in a Sicilian town, a long way from the front line." (pg. 270).
But even though I recognise the achievement of There's No Home, I must confess that I did find it hard to engage with on occasion. It is a very insular novel, concerned more with emotions and thoughts and feeling rather than external stimuli. This is fine, of course, and fully suited to what the novel is trying to achieve, but it is less to my tastes and means you can lose your way on occasion. Baron's prose is also rather more dense than I had come to appreciate in the other two of his works I have so far read. In my past reviews, I've made no secret of my preference for sparser prose - something akin to the 'iceberg' theory, as Hemingway called it. And there was a spare, rugged yet refined prose which I enjoyed in From the City, From the Plough and The Human Kind. But Baron does not employ this style in There's No Home (though, to be fair, it is not the kind of story that suits it) and drops it in favour of a more lyrical style that occasionally reminded me of Dickens. It is a perfectly respectable style of prose, and many readers will prefer it, but it is not always to my liking and not what I expected after my previous experiences of Baron. Of course, these are my own personal experiences from reading the novel and it seems rather churlish of me to criticise Baron's style when a different style (i.e. one closer to From the City, From the Plough) would not have been able to tell the story. It's just that Baron's change of pace meant that I didn't devour the book; I didn't love it as I did his previous books.
It should be stressed here that my only objections (small as they are) are stylistic, not of the book's substance, and even then I admit they are rather unreasonable. The novel is great, a well-written character study with an aura of profound intimacy that Baron has always excelled at. It might not have been everything I expected, and I may not have appreciated it whilst reading it as much as I should have, but it is still a fine work of art. show less
I read The Human Kind because I had been blown away by the emotional power of the same author's novel From the City, From the Plough. I was initially sceptical of the short-story format, as it is not usually one that I easily engage with, but I had no reason to be worried. Alexander Baron is just as sharp, observant, unsentimental and just plain heartbreaking here as he was in that earlier novel.
In fact, it might even be said the short-story format allows him to be even more hard-hitting. It show more allows him to jump from one scene to another without worrying about providing a narrative linkage; I suspect that some of the stories here are little pieces that he just could not fit into the From the City, From the Plough narrative without disrupting its flow. That's not to say this is a dumping ground for half-baked ideas though; there is not a bad story among the lot and each of them aches with raw humanity. There is also a sort of thematic flow throughout the book which ties them all together. In one of the short stories, the main character is discussing Beethoven's symphonies with another soldier, noting how the music is a bunch of different pieces which are woven together into a grand harmony. It is the same with Baron's book. That might sound pretentious to some, but Baron is a master of the craft of storytelling just as Beethoven was a master of composing, and The Human Kind illustrates this just as well as From the City, From the Plough.
Many of Baron's stories genuinely made me want to cry and every single one of them elicited an emotional response. His strength lies in his detached yet paradoxically intimate narrative voice, which somehow makes the heartbreaking moments even more heartbreaking. Baron isn't maudlin or morose. He isn't cynically trying to pull at the reader's heartstrings, and doesn't revel in the depressing side of his stories. He just doesn't filter out the bad stuff and the ugly stuff which arises out of war - he sees no need to, for it is as real as the good stuff about heroism and valour and suchlike - and so the gut-punches come along just as naturally as anything else. Sometimes this works because you aren't suspecting such a horrible thing to happen and so you are taken off-guard: for example, over the course of 'A Pal's a Pal' it becomes clear that a Jewish girl who has lost all her family to the concentration camps has meekly acquiesced to being pimped out as a prostitute by a British soldier. Other times you can guess what might happen, but it still requires a brave writer to actually go there and deliver the story without even the hint of artifice or pretension; the shooting of the mutt in 'Everybody Loves a Dog' is perhaps the best illustration of this.
You also have to remember that all of these stories are based on truth; experiences that Baron lived through as a soldier in World War Two, or which his comrades lived through. Baron takes these experiences and turns them into genuinely great literature. Each and all of them are thematically rich, and cover with great maturity a wide range of topics mostly regarding the standard war stuff, but also covering a lot of things that arise in war which most writers shy away from: racism, animal cruelty, sex and prostitution, and so on. There is little to no combat, which is a shame as one of From the City, From the Plough's greatest strengths was the intense and evocative combat scenes. But, that aside, Baron shows off the full range of his writing powers, powers honed through penetrating observation which means he has the consistently remarkable ability to get to the root of any given character in just one or two lines. It is truly astonishing writing, and thoroughly recommended. show less
In fact, it might even be said the short-story format allows him to be even more hard-hitting. It show more allows him to jump from one scene to another without worrying about providing a narrative linkage; I suspect that some of the stories here are little pieces that he just could not fit into the From the City, From the Plough narrative without disrupting its flow. That's not to say this is a dumping ground for half-baked ideas though; there is not a bad story among the lot and each of them aches with raw humanity. There is also a sort of thematic flow throughout the book which ties them all together. In one of the short stories, the main character is discussing Beethoven's symphonies with another soldier, noting how the music is a bunch of different pieces which are woven together into a grand harmony. It is the same with Baron's book. That might sound pretentious to some, but Baron is a master of the craft of storytelling just as Beethoven was a master of composing, and The Human Kind illustrates this just as well as From the City, From the Plough.
Many of Baron's stories genuinely made me want to cry and every single one of them elicited an emotional response. His strength lies in his detached yet paradoxically intimate narrative voice, which somehow makes the heartbreaking moments even more heartbreaking. Baron isn't maudlin or morose. He isn't cynically trying to pull at the reader's heartstrings, and doesn't revel in the depressing side of his stories. He just doesn't filter out the bad stuff and the ugly stuff which arises out of war - he sees no need to, for it is as real as the good stuff about heroism and valour and suchlike - and so the gut-punches come along just as naturally as anything else. Sometimes this works because you aren't suspecting such a horrible thing to happen and so you are taken off-guard: for example, over the course of 'A Pal's a Pal' it becomes clear that a Jewish girl who has lost all her family to the concentration camps has meekly acquiesced to being pimped out as a prostitute by a British soldier. Other times you can guess what might happen, but it still requires a brave writer to actually go there and deliver the story without even the hint of artifice or pretension; the shooting of the mutt in 'Everybody Loves a Dog' is perhaps the best illustration of this.
You also have to remember that all of these stories are based on truth; experiences that Baron lived through as a soldier in World War Two, or which his comrades lived through. Baron takes these experiences and turns them into genuinely great literature. Each and all of them are thematically rich, and cover with great maturity a wide range of topics mostly regarding the standard war stuff, but also covering a lot of things that arise in war which most writers shy away from: racism, animal cruelty, sex and prostitution, and so on. There is little to no combat, which is a shame as one of From the City, From the Plough's greatest strengths was the intense and evocative combat scenes. But, that aside, Baron shows off the full range of his writing powers, powers honed through penetrating observation which means he has the consistently remarkable ability to get to the root of any given character in just one or two lines. It is truly astonishing writing, and thoroughly recommended. show less
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