The Clouds Above

I was born (barely) while World War II was still being fought. And, even though it was over two months later, to my parents' generation it was the defining event and I grew up in its shadow. The Battle of Britain, especially, was a David-and-Goliath story to make my heart pound: the exploits of the Royal Air Force, the grim courage of the civilian population, the small beleaguered island nation against the Nazi war machine. What a drama.Although THE CLOUDS ABOVE has all the suspense and pathos you'd expect from a novel set in those legendary days, it also goes deeper, giving a real sense of what it was like to be alive then. It evokes not only the outer signposts of a country under siege (the constant danger, profound fatigue, late trains, rationed food) but its inner landscape --- for this book, as its subtitle suggests, is a romance. Drawing on the wartime diaries of his mother, who was a nurse, Andrew Greig alternates between two voices: Len Westbourne, a young RAF pilot and Stella Gardam, a WAAF radar operator trained to spot enemy aircraft. The device makes sense both structurally and emotionally. We get the queasy normality of life on the ground versus the dizzy, sped-up horror of aerial battles. We get middle-class, university-educated, initially snobbish Stella versus gangly country boy Len, whose father works in a factory. And we get the slow, unbearably sweet progress of their love, which they first resist as too big a risk (the RAF was not known for its long lifespans), until the war makes them see that no longer is anything safe nor is there any reason to hold back.The war in this novel is more than a conflict --- it is an enormous catalyst for change. "One day there may be a generation without a great war," Stella thinks. "What will they do then to know themselves?" Adolescent habits and attachments fall away as planes are shot down, radar huts bombed and dance halls blown to smithereens. Conventions and social divisions loosen and totter --- Stella makes friends with Maddy Phillps, an ebullient if "unrespectable" charmer and with her "posh" sergeant, Foxy Farringdon (perfect teeth, perfect nails, country house, upper-class drawl). Len draws close to a Pole serving in the RAF, Tadeusz, a bitter, tragic figure whose country has already fallen victim to Hitler. The pilots, in fact, form a club more select than any elite London establishment.Both of them try not to become morally numb --- Len agonizes over what it means to kill, while Stella imagines a young Fraulein at a radar screen on the other side of the Channel. They struggle to live and, at the same time, prepare to die, recognizing finally that this contradiction is the human condition, not just a byproduct of war. "How can we love anyone in wartime?" Stella thinks as she and Len ride back on the train from a week's leave in the country. "It's too stupid. Then I looked round the train . . . and saw that everyone on it was going to die, sooner or later. How can we love in the fac

This lovely book serves as a shattering reminder of the horrors that our grandparents faced in order to allow us to be so free and easy. We walk along streets and buildings that once were bombed, where people died, where people fought. It is so easy to forget when the scars are so well hidden. I am glad that writers like Greig remind us how lucky we are. Written as a first person narrative (ostensibly as the journals of the protagonanists), but taking the views of two people, it can occasionally be confusing as you jump from one persons thoughts to another without warning. But the first person double narrative works in giving insight to two people as they fight for themselves, for us, for each other. It is a love story and a war story. You know these people. They could be you, caught up in something world changing and horrifying. It made me close my eyes and be thankful that they made these sacrifices so that I wouldn't have to.

While a book by a published poet, as Greig is, framed by a wartime diary might seem an unlikely reason to reaccess your life and what is owed to those who went before "The Clouds Above" will upset your expectations wonderfully. Written as both a love story and a tale of the horrors of war for those too young to understand or avoid it is ultimately a comment on the immediacy and beauty of existence. Four friends, two pilots and their girlfriends during the 1940 Battle of Britain , relationships formed by the happenstance of war dare to love while learning that those attachments might at any momment be destroyed by an enemy fighter or a bomb plunging through a dancehouse roof. And similarly, abetted by Grieg's felicity with the written word, the reader comes , against rising dread, to care greatly for characters who might just survive to realize their dreams. The book brings vividly to life the human cost of war during a time when we have allowed ourselves to be seduced by an image of high technology warfare that hurts no one but "evildoers." The real cost, Greig points out, is to those we love. The real damage, it becomes clear, is to one's heart.

While a book by a published poet, as Greig is, framed by a wartime diary might seem an unlikely reason to reassess your life and what is owed to those who went before "The Clouds Above" will upset your expectations wonderfully. Written as both a love story and a tale of the horrors of war for those too young to understand or avoid it is ultimately a comment on the immediacy and beauty of existence. Four friends, two pilots and their girlfriends during the 1940 Battle of Britain , relationships formed by the happenstance of war dare to love while learning that those attachments might at any moment be destroyed by an enemy fighter or a bomb plunging through a dance house roof. And similarly, abetted by Grieg's felicity with the written word, the reader comes , against rising dread, to care greatly for characters who might just survive to realize their dreams. The book brings vividly to life the human cost of war during a time when we have allowed ourselves to be seduced by an image of high technology warfare that hurts no one but "evildoers." The real cost, Greig points out, is to those we love. The real damage, it becomes clear, is to ones heart.

I love World War II history. Somehow from the depths of hell and the jaws of death, there seem to be magical, romantic times and this book has it all. The most fascinating thing about the book was being able to get into the heads of the two main characters. We are with Len as he climbs into the desolute back country of Scotland, alone with him and his thoughts while a war is being fought hundreds of miles from where he is.You can clearly see the strength of the British people over and over in the pilots' determination to fly many sorties each day, see their friends killed and go back and do the same thing the next day. After Sept. 11, I am convinced that we too might be able to go shopping in Oxford street while another part of London was being bombed. Of course, your heart would not be in it, but showing courage and determination was just a big a part of defeating the enemy as were the Spitfires and Hurricanes.For anyone who loves history and romance and the dramatic times of the 1940's, this book is a must read. When you are finished you better understand the words of Winston Churchill when he said " that never in the course of history have so many owed so much to so few."