The big complaint I had concerning Olivia Manning's Balkan Trilogy (in what was otherwise a generally favourable review) was that it was too far removed from the war, that it was centred too much around Guy and Harriet Pringle and their retinue and marital squabbles while there was a bleeding war afoot. Other readers must have had something of the same reaction, for Manning gives a fair go here at depicting things from someone else's point of view than Harriet's in the form of second lieutenant Simon Boulderstone's (Where O where did you get that surname Olivia?) perspective from the front lines against Rommel's desert campaign.
But, perhaps predictably, it doesn't last, and Simon is invalided out of the war before too long and becomes another player in the grand dance of Guy and Harriet - from Harriet's/Olivia's point of view of course, until the last few pages. This is, perhaps, just as well; for this is the sort of writing at which Manning excels. I actually began to feel that this trilogy was a bit too cramped. I began to long for the large cast of characters and rich pageant of The Balkan Trilogy.
So, yes there's a war on here, and the sorts of horrific, madcap events that occur in a war are depicted here: One day you are out painting and your toddler son picks up a live hand grenade and is blown apart, you and your chummy batsman drive your jeep under a tree for a bit of tuck-in and he cops it as the jeep hits a land mine, a man arrives to tell a husband that the wife that he has thought dead for months is alive and well, waiting downstairs, a few weeks later that man himself dies of typhoid, and so on. One moment here, the next moment not.
But what this book is really about is marriage and whether IT can be survived. Harriet's trials are quite harrowing and ring true. "I want more love than I am given - but where am I to find it?" she asks at one point. At another we find her desperately contemplating:
She shook her head: `I don't know. But what does anyone see in anyone? Perhaps that's what Yeats meant by "love's bitter mystery"!'
For those interested, the quote is from the poem "Who Goes with Fergus?"
In the end, one gets the feeling that marriage, if possible, is something to be endured. Be all this as it may, the great thing about this trilogy - indeed, about all of Manning's writing - is her genius for description. Here, just at random, is her description of someplace between the Suez Canal and Damascus:
"Sitting with the tarpaulin over her hair, she looked out on wild and empty hill country patched light and dark by the sun and cloud. On one side the sea, disturbed by the wind, rolled in on a desert shore. On the other were hills, rocky and bare except for the fur of grass. Black clouds and white clouds wound and unwound, sometimes revealing a stretch of clear blue sky. The rain slanted this way and that, cutting through broad rays of light, one moment pouring down, the next coming abruptly to a stop." P.405
Passages like these make it all worthwhile. Manning seems to have been gifted with a lyrical, photographic memory of people, places and things and uses that gift to marvellous effect here as well as in The Balkan Trilogy.
Still, standing alone, this book really doesn't do too well I'm afraid. It comes across as a disjointed and soap operatic by itself. It truly has to be read with the memories and heft of The Balkan trilogy fresh in one's mind for its full impact to be appreciated. With that caveat in mind, five glowing stars in the desert sky! Even I was choked up when turning the final pages.
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Top reviews from the United States
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Reviewed in the United States on November 18, 2008
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Reviewed in the United States on April 22, 2014
Reviewed in the United States on August 30, 2010
Top reviews from other countries
Cliente de Amazon
Interesting. Well written
Reviewed in Spain on September 20, 2023
Brian
A fitting follow up to The Balkan Trilogy.
Reviewed in Australia on April 16, 2024
