'Some Other War' by Linda Newbery

Summary: Jack and Alice are twins. When war breaks out in 1914 Jack joins the army and Alice becomes a nurse. This is an evocative and dramatic story of war, love and pacifism.

MY THOUGHTS:

I found this book's sequel first, at a free bookstand, then before reading that, discovered an Internet Archive copy of this one. It always amazes me that excellent books can slide beneath the radars of avid bookworms like myself. I'm sure I would have loved these when they were first published in the early nineties, when I was closer in age to the characters. But I simply didn't know about them then! And now, some thirty odd years later, they're out of print. That is so often the way with books. They are more transient than we think.  

Anyway, I enjoyed this just as thoroughly now. 

Jack and Alice Smallwood are working-class twins employed by the Morland family, who are landed gentry, at a property named Greenstocks. Alice is a housemaid and Jack is a groundskeeper and groom's assistant. He finds having to kowtow to Philip Morland, the haughty son and heir, a bitter pill to swallow. Philip is a tale-telling, stuck-up jerk who targets Jack for the worst jobs around the place. 

Romantically, each twin deals with friction. Alice is in love with Edward Sidgwick, the local doctor's son, whose mother considers her beneath them socially, although Lorna, Edward's suffragette sister, becomes her good friend. And Jack has a serious crush on Harriet the flighty second housemaid at Greenstocks, who strings him along as she does many other young fellows, keeping her options open. 

It is 1914 and world news is full of a senator's assassination in Sarajevo. Then rapid chaos breaks out globally and Britain is at war with Germany. The branching of the twins' separate stories suddenly widens as Jack enlists with his friends and heads off to fight on the battlefields of France, and Alice volunteers as a VAD (voluntary aid detachment) nurse which takes her first to London and eventually across the channel. 

The story is fast-moving, emotionally satisfying, and immersive. Alice's nursing exploits are graphic and revealing, but Jack's experiences on the Western Front, dealing with his lifestyle in the trenches, kept me on the edge of my seat. Even before he sets eyes on the German soldiers, he knows they are mere yards away. Exceptional world events require intense heroism and courage from normal people. And Linda Newbery's sensual writing does it justice. 

Although the whole word turns topsy-turvy, some things never change. Philip Morland gets promoted to an officer's position outright, due to nepotism, since his uncle is a colonel. So poor Jack realizes the artificial inequality on the battlefield mirrors that of the small village they come from.   

Still, life involving trench raids and desperate dashes across No Man's Land is new to everyone, a perfect melting pot for unpredictability. The circumstance in which Jack earns himself a DCM (Distinguished Conduct Medal) is wonderful.

Being a World War One novel, we readers know that not every single character we grow fond of will emerge from the pages unscathed (or even alive). So keep a tissue box handy. I think Linda Newbery puts the words of her own mission into Lorna Sidgwick's mouth. 'We must never forget, and future generations must never forget, this appalling, tragic waste of life. There must never be another war.' Great writing that keeps the past alive is vital for this purpose, even for a shorter time than it should, when novels like this one sadly go out of print. 

It wouldn't surprise me if this book makes it onto my list of the ten best reads this year. Now I'll get stuck into its sequel, The Kind Ghosts. 

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 

'Project Hail Mary' by Andy Weir

Summary: Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission—and if he fails, humanity and the earth itself will perish.

Except that right now, he doesn’t know that. He can’t even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it.

All he knows is that he’s been asleep for a very, very long time. And he’s just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company.

His crewmates dead, his memories fuzzily returning, Ryland realizes that an impossible task now confronts him. Hurtling through space on this tiny ship, it’s up to him to puzzle out an impossible scientific mystery—and conquer an extinction-level threat to our species.

MY THOUGHTS: 

First off, my daughter was completely wowed by the movie and ranked it five stars. Then she brought me and her dad to see it with her. Trusting her discernment, I loved it too. And next, she grabbed the novel  as an impulse buy from the book section of Big W and said, 'You read it first.' Having enjoyed the movie, I was up for the challenge. 

So here's how it goes down. 

Poor Ryland Grace wakes up with amnesia aboard a spacecraft, which he later learns is the Hail Mary. In other beds are the withered husks of two corpses. And strong gravity pull in the vessel makes him feel oddly weighted and weak. This is all the info he has to draw from until memory fragments begin to coalesce into a coherent story. Since his recent backstory is as vital and urgent as what later happens aboard the spaceship, the story keeps its momentum by switching back and forth between the two.

Ryland has a doctorate in microbiology but rejected the cutthroat academic lifestyle to become a humble High School science teacher. Only when life on Earth is severely threatened does a scientific paper he wrote come to light.

First global happening to rock his world occurs when a thin red line is evident in the solar system. This is named the 'Petrova Line' after the scientist who first noticed it. Coincidentally, the sun is 0.01% less bright than it should be. It seems the Petrova line is sucking it up, hurtling Earth toward an inevitable ice-age. Panic-driven research at a cellular level reveals the culprit that comprises the line to be 'astrophage' an invasive space algae. 

Eva Stratt, head of the Petrova taskforce, demands Ryland's involvement. Although she doesn't introduce herself as the world's most powerful woman, (even if only temporarily), this is precisely who she is. 

Astronomical research reveals that our sun is not the only star in the same fix. Stars across the galaxy are dimming, and seem to infect each other. The only untouched star in the cluster is Tau Ceti. That's where the immensely grand but hastily thrown together Hail Mary mission is headed. And Ryland's memory still lags when it comes to the question of how he ended up on board. He assumes he must've volunteered, right?  

About a third of the way in begins a brilliant extraterrestrial bromance. Since multiple stars are affected, it stands to reason that earthlings can't be the only denizens of the cosmos in search of a solution. It is here that Ryland Grace meets Rocky, who's on the same mission.

This legendary support character is an ammonia breathing engineer from the solar system whose star is called 40-Eridani, therefore Ryland dubs him an 'Eridian.' Rocky speaks in strange musical chords and resembles a faceless spider composed of rocks. It was a tall order for the movie to retain Rocky's minimalistic appearance along with his compelling charm, and they nailed it. 

I'll leave the awesome mathematics and science for other more switched-on reviewers to discuss. The novel's highlight for me is Ryland Grace's two key relationships, first with Eva Stratt and second with Rocky. 

For some time Grace appears to be the dictatorial Stratt's right-hand-man, but when push comes to shove, he's a mere commodity like everyone else. Her character raises a fascinating, if uncomfortable question. Does it take a person as dispassionate and unemotional as Stratt to perform the ultimate altruistic act, which is saving the planet? Weir seems to hint that anyone even slightly softer or more compassionate might not be adequate for the job. I find her very admirable in a scary sort of way.

 In Grace's second major relationship, he and Rocky start out as mere cohorts on a vital, mutual mission, but bond in a far more emotional and empathetic way, in which personal sacrifice is always bound to play a role. In other words, when we use the word 'human' as a verb, it seems to describe Rocky far more than Stratt. Perhaps that irony is the crux of the story.  

Some of Ryland's off-the-cuff creativity tips should be easy for us to take on board in our less high stakes lives. 

'It's a simple idea, but also stupid. Thing is, when stupid ideas work, they become genius. We'll see which way this one falls.'

Or how about:

'One thing I learned back in my graduate school days. When you're stupid tired, accept you're stupid tired. Don't try to solve things right then.' 

Rocky places his finger (or rather claw!) on a fascinating point which I've considered before from other books. The pesky existence of altruism and self-sacrifice is not something that can be examined or quantified by science. Once again, the best of human (and in this case, Eridian) nature gets us pondering spiritual things. 'You and me both willing to die for our people. Why, question? Evolution hates death... You and me are good people.' 

I believe we readers occasionally need a novel intelligent and expansive enough to humble us. This one ticks my boxes. 

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 

See my review of The Martian from a whole decade ago!

'Jack' by Marilynne Robinson

Summary: Marilynne Robinson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Humanities Medal, returns to the world of Gilead with Jack, the latest in one of the great works of contemporary American fiction.

Jack tells the story of John Ames Boughton, the beloved, erratic, and grieved-over prodigal son of a Presbyterian minister in Gilead, Iowa. In segregated St. Louis sometime after World War II, Jack falls in love with Della Miles, an African American high school teacher who is also the daughter of a preacher―discerning, generous, and independent. Their fraught, beautiful romance is one of Robinson’s greatest achievements.

MY THOUGHTS: 

I discovered this in a Little Free Library one evening. The conclusion to Robinson's Gilead series hadn't even been on my radar. It is the backstory in which Jack Boughton, everyone's favorite Prodigal Son, does Romeo. This novel was published in 2020, so when I first read Gilead back in 2017, Jack hadn't even been written yet. I tell you, I was keen to get it home on my TBR pile. 

But although I love Jack (the character), the thought of spending a whole novel in his own tortured headspace daunted me. Experiencing him through the points of view of his godfather and sister in the first two books was exhausting, though very rewarding. Turns out my nerves were justified, but I'm still glad I've read it.

The setting is St. Louis in the 1940s. Jack is a self-proclaimed bum who holds down a string of menial and un-prestigious jobs. Della Miles, the love of his life, is a young colored woman; an English teacher and the pride and joy of her family. They click as instant soulmates from the moment he first comes to her rescue in a rainstorm, and she mistakes him for a reverend. 

Jack aspires to a philosophy of utter harmlessness. His youthful mistake with the girl, Annie Wheeler, which turned so tragic, still hangs over his head. Yet now, ironically, he could commit harm so easily simply for loving Della, for they live in the Jim Crow era when interracial marriage was illegal. Their disgusting, discriminative society is the real villain, for what could be more harmless than a loving couple being free to marry and raise a family? The biggest irony of all is that what Jack and Della long for more than anything is a simple union that would not harm a soul. 

It's quite a compelling version of Romeo and Juliet.  

In terms of the series as a whole, the placement of this final novel is very interesting. If we're being strictly chronological, the final moment for all these characters comes at the end of book one, Gilead, when the minister John Ames gives Jack a very special blessing. In Robinson's Gilead quartet, the sequels are actually prequels. The second, third, and fourth stories all take place either simultaneously or previously to Gilead. When I read Home (Number Two), I found myself agreeing with Jack's sister, Glory, that Della sounded like bad news for him. 

Yet doesn't this prove that we shouldn't make snap judgements without knowing a person. For now that we actually meet Della in this fourth instalment, it's clear that she's truly the best thing that ever happened to him on many emotional levels. She imparts confidence, pride, and a reason for living to Jack. She cares for him with deep passion, enough to give up everything for his sake, including her standing with her own family. 

That brings me to another point. I read some other reviews and got triggered by a fair percentage of readers who claim that they cannot find Della believable, for why ever would she fall for a dropkick like Jack? I think they overlook the fact that we remain in Jack's headspace throughout the entire story, and that's the very point. He's our filter, so to speak, and he can't believe it either! He considers her love for him miraculous. But if we care to read between the lines, there are plenty of hints as to why she loves him so devotedly and considers him a 'glorious presence out of place in the world.'

Just because these hints elude the modest and self-critital Jack, who is our lens through which we experience the action, they shouldn't necessarily elude us too, for he's our hero. 

Hey, our boy rarely goes to church, but whenever he does, preachers tend to make him the butt of their sermons! No wonder he has a bit of a persecution complex. By the way, if you're into poetry, art, theology, or metaphysics, Jack and Della talk about that sort of stuff a lot. He has a super extensive vocabulary too, so you'll be bound to pick up a few new words. (Can you be down-and-out and a bit of a literary snob at the same time? I think Jack proves that you can.)

I feel like setting the record straight on one other point too. Some reviewers consider Jack to be 'middle aged' while Della is much younger. I don't know where they get this notion from. At the start of Gilead Jack is 43, and that takes place at least eight years later, since Jack and Della have an 8-year son who is nowhere on the horizon throughout this novel. That means Jack must be 35 at the oldest during this story, and most likely a year or two younger. Hey everyone, I am Gen X, and 33 or 34 is nowhere near middle-aged in my books.

I'll leave you with this awesome line from Della to Jack. 'If I could imagine an eternity of sitting here with you, talking nonsense, there would be nothing more I would want from death.' I feel I have to lop off a star and a half simply because Jack is the target of so much injustice, unfairness, and plain bad luck, my heart ached too much to consider it a thoroughly enjoyable read. 

🌟🌟🌟 ½ 

Check out my reviews of the previous books in the series, Gilead, Home, and Lila.