So Much Life Left Over

April 1, 2018

Best known for the award-winning Corelli's Mandolin but the author of multiple good books (my favorite: Birds Without Wings), Granta Best of Young British Novelists de Bernières limns childhood friends shattered and scattered by World War I. But their paths keep crisscrossing, with the center held by RAF flying ace Daniel and his wife, Rosie, a wartime nurse, whose marriage is foundering.

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 15, 2018
The destinies of the four McCosh sisters and their childhood friends in the aftermath of World War I form the foundation of a multiperspective saga embracing fidelity and fertility, empire, belief, and parental love.This new hymn to a bygone British era of heroism, engineering skills, and middle-class quirks by de Bernières (Notwithstanding, 2016, etc.) opens in colonial Ceylon (renamed Sri Lanka) in 1925, where handsome war hero and flying ace Daniel Pitt has settled with his wife, Rosie, now pregnant with their second child. But this happy marriage is doomed, leaving Daniel eternally questing for love and access to his children. Back in London, Rosie's sisters, the McCoshes, are forming their futures, too. Ottilie decides to set aside an unrequited passion; Sophie marries her chaplain and opens a school; and Christabel strikes up "an unconventional friendship with a green-eyed artist who comported herself like a man." These figures are but the core characters in a sprawling cast which also includes two of Daniel's mistresses (one Ceylonese who bears him a son and one Irish), neither of whom he can marry since Rosie will never divorce him. And there's more. The McCosh family gardener, Oily Wragge (yes), offers a working-class perspective as both soldier and engineer, and Daniel ends up fathering additional illegitimate children, although that's nothing compared to the laundry list of mistresses and offspring revealed in Mr. McCosh's will. Class, punitive marriages (and wives), war--the themes are many and sometimes debatable in this economical yet ambitious narrative that stretches from the scarred setting of the interwar phase to a resumption of conflict and loss in World War II. De Bernières unsettlingly alternates a light comic tone with more serious material and also often slips into clichéd, sentimental characterization. As a result, only the last of the story's heartaches penetrates deeply.A readable if off-balance slice of history in which breadth comes at the expense of depth.

COPYRIGHT(2018) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from June 25, 2018
England between the two world wars is revisited in this witty and heartfelt novel. Daniel Pitt, a former RFC pilot, is married to Rosie McCosh and runs a tea factory in Ceylon. His brother, Archie, a solider on the North-West Frontier (what is present-day Pakistan), is secretly in love with Rosie—just as Rosie’s spinster sister, Ottilie, back at home in England, is secretly in love with Archie. Readers also meet Rosie’s other sister, Christabel, a bohemian who has a special relationship with Gaskell, a barnstorming artist; Oily Wragge, the gardener on the McCosh family estate, who suffers from nightmares about his war experiences; and various and sundry mistresses of unhappily married Daniel, who bear him several illegitimate children over the years. Through a variety of points of view, de Bernières (Corelli’s Mandolin) creates an impressionistic depiction of Britain recovering from one world war and slipping inexorably into another as motion pictures begin to talk, land and air records are set, and Daniel and his friends and family heroically try to adjust to changing times. The novel is light on plot, but the characters are such excellent company that it makes for an irresistible reading experience, especially for fans of Downton Abbey.

July 1, 2018
De Berni�res' (Notwithstanding, 2016) latest sweeps across continents as it provides intimate glimpses into the lives of WWI survivors who never expected to have, as the title states provocatively, so much life left over. Searching for meaning and direction after massive destruction and loss, some irrevocably drift, while others grasp for purpose. In Ceylon, war-hero Daniel and his wife, Rosie, halfheartedly attempt to prop up their doomed marriage. While Rosie concentrates on religion and the children, Daniel embarks upon a series of affairs to fill the void left by his emotionally absent wife. As the scene shifts back to London, Rosie's three sisters are forging a series of unusual paths as they brave seriously altered futures. Interweaving their individual stories, de Berni�res creates a vivid tapestry of the challenges and frustrations faced by the Lost Generation.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)