Chris Cleave

This is not a perfect book and perhaps people would especially find faults in it today, but I loved it. Both narrators are rendered beautifully. They are truly alive as characters. The writing is wonderful. The story is too real -- that the UK did this, and that it was hushed up, and that people died and people immigrated and it all just keeps getting swept away, and of course it is women who bear the greatest weight of that violence. Highly recommended.

When World War 11 is announced, Mary North is keen to join the war effort and quits finishing school to do so. Disappointingly to Mary, she is made a school teacher , which seems altogether too tame. However, she soon finds her place. Children who are physically handicapped, difficult to teach or from non- Caucasian backgrounds, are sent back from the evacuation to the country to London to be taught, during the London Blitz. Mary becomes their keen advocate and teacher.

Tom Shaw and Alistair show more Heath are roommates sharing a flat in London. Tom chooses not to join the military, and is given a school district in London to run instead. Alistair restores art, but almost immediately signs up for the service. Since Mary is appointed to be a teacher and Tom runs her school district, the two become friends and are attracted to each other.

Alistair quickly finds himself in the heat of the battle in France and later on in the Siege of Malta.

After Mary's teaching is forced to come to an end, she and her close friend Hilda volunteer with the Air Raid Precautions, serving as ambulance drivers / first aid attendants during the bombing in London.

Cleave is wonderful and powerful writer , portraying the horrors and depravity of war with vivid images. Relationships are well and realistically drawn and make up an important part of the story. Despite the savage portrayal of war, Chris Cleve leavens the book with dark humour.

A few quotes :

As Mary begs for her classroom to be re- opened " Then what are we to do with crooked and the coloured and the slow? Are we to let them rot, simply because it is not policy for them to exist?" p 226

As Alistair endeavors to cope with death and near starvation at the battle front , at Christmas time

"The orderlies brought in something that the cook had made of out of breadcrumbs and canned malevolence...." Alistair lifted the corner with his fork .' I don't know whether to put mustard or marmalade on it.'" p 215

In a letter written by Mary " I was brought up to believe that everyone brave was forgiven, but in wartime, courage is cheap and clemency out of season'". p 245

A beautifully written and thought provoking read that is destined to perhaps be my favorite of 2016.

Highly recommended and I am delighted to read that Chris Cleave is planning a sequel in some three years or so.

5 stars. show less

Chris Cleave is nothing if not ambitious. In Little Bee, he not only takes on the issues of immigration, globalization, imperialism, and personal responsibility, but does so in the voices of two unforgettable women, one a solidly middle-class English fashion magazine editor, the other a 16-year-old Nigerian refugee. As you might imagine, Cleave doesn't deal with these issues in a pat way, nor does he allow his readers to do so. And although parts of this book are very, very difficult to read show more -- all the more so because they seem to come from out of the blue -- they don't seem cheap or manipulative.

Like a lot of readers, I'm trying to figure out whether the coy flap copy for this book, which practically tosses its curls before the readers' eyes and says that it can't give away a single plot point lest the whole book be ruined, is a brilliant bit of misdirection or a piece of cutesy-poo marketing gone awry. Being the cynic that I am, my money is on the latter. The copy makes the book sound like it's going to be one of those faux-whimsical Oprah-type tales, a la The Secret Life of Bees or Before Women Had Wings -- you know, the old "two timid women find each other and before you know it they've engaged in an orgy of personal growth like you wouldn't believe and become their bestest best selves." It's not, but I'm guessing some marketer figured he knew what sells.

I also can't figure out why the American publisher didn't release the book under its original British title, The Other Hand, which is a far better title, thematically and otherwise, than Little Bee. show less

It is 1939 and war has just been declared. Upper class Londoner, Mary immediately rushes to the War Office to sign up to help. At first, she is disappointed to be offered a position as teacher for children evacuated to the countryside. However, she soon becomes attached to her students especially 10-year-old Zachery, an African American whose father was part of a minstrel show performing in London.

Tom has plans to sit out the war but, as so many men head off to fight, he gets a position as show more School Administrator for those children who, for various reasons, either can’t be evacuated or who are returned to London because no one will take them in: the poor, the less attractive (or too attractive), those who are mentally and physically challenged, or non-white. He meets Mary and the two become lovers.

Alistair is Tom’s best friend. He enlists almost immediately. He is sent to France and his life becomes one of long and grueling days of marching and boredom broken occasionally by the horror of enemy airstrikes and hidden land mines. Finally, on leave, he returns home and Tom introduces him to Mary. The two are instantly drawn to each other despite their loyalty to Tom. At the end of his leave, Alistair is assigned to Malta where airstrikes, hunger, rain, mud and the death of close friends are seemingly unending.

Everyone Brave is Forgiven is the latest novel by author Chris Cleave and I have seen it described as an historical romance set in wartime. However, although there are certainly elements of romance here, that is a much too simplistic description of this book and doesn’t do it nearly enough justice. Often novels about war-time England seem to be just longer variations on that famous motivational poster from the British government, now a popular internet meme, Keep Calm and Carry On; the stereotypical British stiff upper lip, the almost immediate return to relative normalcy after an air raid, the kindness and welcoming of evacuated children to the countryside, and the instant romances. But this story transcends that simplistic view of what it means to be both a soldier and a civilian caught in the realities of war. It is more honest, more moving, more emotionally and intellectually challenging.

It focuses on the facts of war that have rarely been expressed in novels except those by once soldiers: the boredom and the fear, the immediacy and unpredictability of death, the horrors of the bombings, the sense of displacement, shock, grief, and sense of guilt of the survivors, and the use of humour to help them carry on. And it shows something I have rarely seen before in a novel: the overt racism that permeated Britain even as they were fighting a brutal war against fascism.

Everyone Brave is Forgiven is a beautifully written book with clever dialogue, memorable characters and stark powerful imagery. It is, at once, heart-warming and heart-rending and I can’t recommend it highly enough. show less