Kate SlotoverRiddle Reads…. The Dust that Falls from Dreams
Our bookhound pulls up her deckchair and settles in with the latest from Captain Corelli author Louis de Bernières
Review by Kate Slotover
Louis de Bernières, I know that name…. He wrote that book that everyone was reading some years back…..?
Er, over 20 years ago now. It was his fourth novel, but Captain Corelli’s Mandolin (1994) was the one that brought British author Louis de Bernières to fame. It was the must-read book of the summer, but its success didn’t stop there. In 2003 it was ranked no. 19 on the BBC’s ‘Big Read’ list of best-loved novels (just ahead of War and Peace, at no. 20), and was adapted into a film starring Nicholas Cage (which didn’t do the novel any favours if we’re honest). The book tipped over into ubiquity when Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts curled up with a copy at the end of Notting Hill.
Yes, of course. So what’s new?
In the years since Captain Corelli, de Bernières has published Red Dog, Birds Without Wings, The Partisan’s Daughter, and this month sees the release of his latest, The Dust that Falls from Dreams, his first novel set in the UK. It spans the last ‘golden years’ of King Edward VII’s reign, through the First World War and the peace that follows. A large cast of characters centres around the McCosh family headed by Hamilton McCosh, a Scottish businessman whose fortunes rise and fall throughout the novel, and his wife and four daughters, Rosie, Christabel, Ottilie and Sophie. There is also the neighbouring Pendennis family with three boys, Sidney, Albert and Ashbridge ‘each of the younger exactly six inches shorter than his immediate elder, so that they reminded some people of a set of library steps’, and the Pitt family consisting of two boys, Daniel and Archie, and their widowed French mother. It’s more middle-class than Downton Abbey, but theirs is a world encompassing servants and retainers that extends the cast of characters still further.
Sounds like a lot going on. What’s the story about?
The children of the three houses form a loose group known as ‘the Pals’. In time the boys, now young men, will enlist while the women remain at home, initially somewhat restricted by domestic routines, but as the war continues and there is a need for nurses, mechanics and drivers, they too are drawn in to war work. Some survive the war, others don’t. In Captain Corelli’s Mandolin a character observes ‘history ought to consist only of the anecdotes of the little people who are caught up in it’ which sums up de Bernières approach perfectly: it is through the everyday details of lives and relationships, such as the central story of Rosie McCosh and the two men she loves, that a portrait is beautifully drawn of British society as a whole, and how the war changed everything.
For the survivors even in peacetime there are still dangers, such as the Spanish Flu (killing over 200,000 in Britain), or the unfamiliar hazards of motor cars that are increasingly used instead of horses. More insidious but no less powerful is the trauma and shock that many who survived the war have to face. Flying ace Daniel Pitt (a character familiar to anyone who grew up reading the Biggles books) is haunted every night by a ceaseless procession of dead soldiers he feels compelled to watch until the very end. On the home front the matriarch of the family, Mrs McCosh, is traumatised by the loss of a close friend to a bomb and the horrors she witnesses as she rushes to the scene to try to help; she is simply not the same person from that moment on.
De Bernières is fascinated by war, almost all of his books feature armed conflict of some kind or another, and he writes about it very well – a strange accolade but it’s true. He has a way of capturing human experience in all its complexity; the men at the front endure unimaginable horror, but at the same time there are moments of beauty and humour. Friendship becomes a binding force as the old structures of class are blown away, replaced instead by comradeship and loyalty. And in peacetime this has wider implications as men and women who served their country as equals are unwilling to resume their former positions as servants. Everyone, no matter what their role before the war, must struggle to make a new life for themselves.
Despite the difficult subject matter this is a novel suffused with warmth and humour as it follows the threads of love and family ties. It is a pleasure to follow these characters through the tumultuous times in which they live.
Anything else I should know? What does Riddle think of it?
The book is drawn from de Bernières own family history. In a way, this story is as much about the dead as the living, about the changes in history wrought by those who became absent. As such it makes a moving tribute to all those who served in that war, and indeed in any other. De Bernières is a fine writer whose characters leap off the page, although initially the novel takes a little while to settle down and find its own rhythm. The large cast of characters and the juxtaposition of domestic scenes with battle invokes War and Peace and like Tolstoy, de Bernières is interested in the fears, hopes and dreams of each one of his characters, no matter how major or minor. In some places, however, this feels stretched a little thinly. The central character of Rosie seems strangely reserved, almost as if the author doesn’t want us to get to know her too well, while other characters, such as the third sister Ottilie, seem little more than sketches to throw the others into greater relief.
In general, however, this is a well-told and engrossing story, bringing back to life a generation who are slipping from our collective memory, lives lived that otherwise might be lost in time.
Also recommended:
If you read another Louis de Bernières novel I would actually suggest you make it Birds Without Wings, a strangely underrated masterpiece (in this reviewer’s opinion). Captain Corelli’s Mandolin is also a fine book, although not as unequivocally brilliant as the above. Biggles of the Camel Squadron by Captain W.E. Johns will teach you all you need to know about aerial combat and the unique set of codes that governed dogfights in the sky. 