Everyone Brave is Forgiven

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 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 show more 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

“But what good is it to teach a child to count, if you don't show him that he counts for something?”

* * *
“Mary leaned back, exhaled, and watched her smoke rise. 'What sort of man do you want anyway?'
"Tall. Funny. Never came top of his class or pulled the wings off bees."
"Yes, but I mean really? When all of this is over, and assuming we win -" ...
Hilda snorted. "(I) just want a tall man and a stiff drink. You could even swap the adjectives.”

This WWII novel is set in London and battle areas, principally Malta (where a grandfather of author Cleave fought). Its five principal characters are Mary, an attractive, broad-minded 18 year old from a wealthy family who volunteers immediately upon war being declared, her close but less show more prepossessing friend Hilda, who helps Mary but gets annoyed that men always gravitate toward her, teaching administrator Tom who finds a class for Mary to teach, Tom's friend Alistair, an art restorer at the Tate who joins the war as an officer, and Zachary, a young black student of Mary's whom she helps amid the era's racism.

It's an exceptionally well-told story that, among other things, depicts the bombing's effects on the city and its populace vividly and better than any other book I've read on the subject. All the characters go through harrowing experiences of one kind or another. I found the use of the n-word and the racism difficult, but Cleave is making a legitimate point about the state of affairs at the time, and Mary will have none of it, thank goodness. I couldn't stop turning the pages, and the dialogue in particular is top of the line - smart, often surprising, and at times laugh-out-loud witty. Not quite five stars for me, but close. show less

“Life took longer to reassemble than it did to blow apart, but that didn't mean it wouldn't be lovely, providing that one remembered to go for country walks, and to tune the wireless to music.” — Chris Cleave, “Everyone Brave Is Forgiven”

Chris Cleave's fourth novel, “Everyone Brace Is Forgiven” (2016), is about reassembling lives blown apart by World War II. Yet it is a love story that the war makes possible.

Cleave says his novel was inspired by his own grandparents, although the story is based only loosely on their experiences.

Mary is an idealistic rich girl whose mother only wants to marry well. Instead she volunteers to help with the war effort however she can, then gets assigned to teach school, even though she lacks show more any qualifications. Most London children are soon sent to the countryside when the Germans start bombing the city, but some children, either because they are black, disabled in some way or otherwise unattractive, are rejected by the country people and returned to London. Mary decides to teach them.

She falls in love with Tom, her supervisor, but then one fateful night she and her best friend, Hilda, go out with Tom and his best friend, Alistair, and magic strikes between Mary and Alistair, an Army officer. Hilda feels betrayed because she likes Alistair, too. As for Tom, a German bomb soon kills him, as well as most of Mary's students. For most of the novel Alistair and Mary are separated by the war, he under siege on Malta and she driving an ambulance during bombing raids. Both suffer disabling injuries.

The war destroys so much. Will it destroy this love that had just one brief night to form? Will everyone brave be forgiven? Will everyone forgiven stay brave? Cleave deals with such questions in an incredibly beautiful and meaningful novel. show less

Everyone Brave Is Forgiven is a love story set in the terror-filled times of the first few years of WW II. The settings vary from the streets and bomb shelters of London to the siege against British troops on Malta. Both settings are horrific scenes of death, destruction and abject terror.
This book’s primary story about a romance is, frankly, not as interesting as the surrounding events and situations, the vividness of its descriptions, and the honest handling of both war and of racism.
Beautiful but privileged Mary falls for soldier Alastair just as he is shipped off to Malta. Abandoning the safety of her privileged life, Mary wants to help children learn. When she can’t get a position working with mainstream children, Mary takes on show more the rejected and disowned, those outcasts who continue to be marginalized even today. She confronts first hand the abject, blatant and unapologetic racism of British society.
While Mary sees the full brunt of racism in London, Alastair feels the full brunt of war in Malta. The mangling of human bodies, the terror of unremitting fear of death, the dehumanization necessary for some as a means of psychological survival and the full mental and physical devastation that war truly is fills the pages of the novel.
So many books and movies gloss over or ignore what wars really do to victims, civilian and military alike, but this book does a good job of confronting and portraying them. The grisly horrors of children and civilians torn into pieces by enemy bombs in London vividly compares to the equally grisly death, destruction, privation and long term after effects of warfare on the battlefront.
Everyone Brave Is Forgiven goes beyond describing the carnage of war into portraying the psychological impact it has on people, both combatants and civilian victims. These scars impact lives and relationships long after peace treaties are signed and wars end.
This is a compelling book that clearly goes beyond being a romance and becomes a great book of historical fiction as well. 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 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 show more 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

I received this book from Reading with Robin and Simon & Schuster.

Mary is an idealistic 18 year old girl who believes she has been called to be a teacher merely as subterfuge for the real job the War Office wants her to do which is to be a spy or something equally as exotic & heroic. They surely can't mean that she'll be doing something as mundane as teaching. But that is her job. And it's related to her teaching job that she meets two men, Tom and Alistair who are best friends.

I can't say more because if I start I'll not be able to shut up and will give the story away. Let me say instead this is one of the best books I've read. What I love about Chris Cleave's books is he makes me feel what the characters feel and makes me able to show more hear the characters voices so clearly. In this book I felt my self in London during the bombings, I found myself gripping my seat and holding my breath hoping the bombs weren't going to hit. I laughed, cried and was utterly caught up in Mary's life in London and Alistair's in the war. It was a shock when I quit reading and I was back in my safe, comfortable house. I know this story will stay with me for a long time. show less

As often, I come late to the party (in real life, I’m very, very punctual, in case you’re wondering), and I’m getting all glowy and excited while everyone is already close to the hangover.

Yet, I still feel the need to write this post (adding to Goodreads’ 4000+ reviews already) because I loved the book and there might be some late-comers out there who still need some convincing, and particularly from someone who never, ever listens to all the hype (to a fault, evidently).

Yes, it’s a love story and a war story, but it takes unusual twists and turns. It addresses some themes I’d never heard about in this genre, like casual British racism against Blacks, addiction to morphine, the siege of Malta (where British soldiers show more couldn’t really fight back). It’s also unusual because of the fate of the characters (I won’t spoil anything) and because the book ends in 1942, very far from the victory.

Read the rest of my review at Smithereens. show less