Fallen Skies

I usually prefer Philippa Gregory's Tudor books, but this one was just as good! I couldn't put it down!

The author is well-known for her historical novels about royal personages, but this book, first published in 1993 and re-issued in 2008, is among her best and is timely in this era of war. It is set in the immediate aftermath of World War I in England. A veteran, a former officer, from an upper-class family is haunted by war nightmares. He falls in love with a pretty, very young music-hall performer, seeing in her naivete the pre-war innocence he misses. The impoverished girl reluctantly marries her rich swain. Gradually, we realize that he suffers secretly from what is now called "Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder" and, furthermore, he was not an emotionally-steady person when he went to war. Indeed, the war gave him the opportunity to work off his underlying anger at being the less-beloved of two sons by killing "the enemy". I can see why some audiences, especially the British, may not have taken to a book that says that some "heroes" were nothing of the kind. Current readers know that atrocities are not committed only by the other side; we may be shocked and saddened but we are no longer surprised. The fast-moving, dramatic plot deals with the young wife's difficult chore of dealing with her increasingly-demented husband.

This is the first Philippa Gregory novel I read and it was so good, I want every single books she has written.

I think I have read all of Philippa Gregory's work. Fallen Skies was unique in the structure of the last few chapters in the book. The level of suspense and the finely crafted web of facts and characters all come together for the best who-done-it ending I have ever read. The book would not be characterized by most as a mystery but I couldn't help but marvel at Gregory's expertise and compare her to the best of mystery writers. The historical and social aspects of the story are as good as any she has written, but again, the suspense at the end is brilliant.

I discovered Philippa Gregory within the last year and have now read five of her books, Fallen Skies being the most recent. As always, she has created multi-dimensional characters where it's possible to even feel some sympathy for the "villain" of the piece. The heroine of the book, Lily Vallance, is very much a product of her times when roles for women were quite restrictive. Gregory does a great job of portraying just how much power husbands had over their wives in the early part of the last century. Her husband, World War I vet, Stephen Winters, is a tragic figure although to state he was purely a product of the horrors of the war may not be quite true. His own upbringing and profound sibling rivalry also had to have played a part in the man he became in the trenches of Belgium.The supporting characters of Charlie, Lily's true love, Muriel, Stephen's mother and Coventry, Stephen's chauffeur/best friend are wonderfully written. I especially enjoyed Gregory's constant reference to the food that "Cook" served the family during the rigidly proscribed meal times. She ably described the societal customs of the upper middle class and how Lily constantly chafed at them.This is not a romance novel, by any means, but a fascinating story of what happened to the generation of men who fought in World War I and the impact of this on those left on the home front.

Fallen Skies is a delicately written book full of dark and terrible imagery. The main character of the book is Lily Valance, a naive young singer who longs for fame. Lily catches the eye of WWI vet Stephen Winters, a middle class man who has been scarred beyond belief by his fighting experiences. He determines to marry her, despite the fact she herself is more concerned with singing and the elusive, attractive piano player Charlie. The lives of these three people intertwine, and lead both to tragedy and joy. A word of warning - the story is wonderful, yet some of the images (Stephen's flashbacks from the war) are explicit and brutal. If you are looking for a fascinating read that studiously avoids cliches, then I would definetly reccommend this book!