They were an inseparable tribe of childhood friends whose world was torn apart by the First World War. Some were lost in battle, and those who survived have had their lives unimaginably upended, scattered to Ceylon and India, France and Germany, and, inevitably, back to Britain. Now, at the dawn of the 1920s, all are trying to pick up the pieces. At the center of Louis de Bernières’s riveting … novel are Daniel, an RAF flying ace, and Rosie, a wartime nurse. As their marriage is slowly revealed to be built on lies, Daniel finds solace—and, sometimes, family—with other women, and Rosie draws her religion around herself like a carapace. Here too are Rosie’s sisters—a bohemian, a minister’s wife, and a spinster, each seeking purpose and happiness in her own unconventional way; and Daniel’s military brother, unable to find his footing in a peaceful world. Told in brief, dramatic chapters, So Much Life Left Over follows the stories of these old friends over the decades as their paths re-cross or their ties fray, as they test loyalties and love, face survivor’s grief and guilt, and adjust to a new world.
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Prepare for infatuation and heartbreak.
In SO MUCH LIFE LEFT OVER, the reader holds in her hands an entire world where she will become intimates of the men and women on the pages. These characters are both traumatized and cause trauma. They make awful decisions–from the small and foolish to the epically cataclysmic–and yet they are profoundly endearing because of their enormous capacities for love.
De Bernieres titles each chapter, making little stories of them. Narrators and points of view change, style and structure shift, settings and times switch, threads left open are later picked up, hearts are broken, mended, and broken again, and yet the reader is never left confused or unmoored because of the assured storytelling.
I was left a sobbing mess by SO MUCH LIFE LEFT OVER. If you love stories that consume you and leave you a little broken, I highly recommend it. This novel will win awards.
The narrative of Louis de Bernieres’s So Much Life Left Over has the feel of a short story collection. The chapters are are told from the perspective of friends whose lives were upended by World War I – psyches shattered, fiances and brothers killed, dreams derailed. In the aftermath of the war, they’ve settled across the world, in Ceylon, in India (modern day Pakistan), in Britain, and are busy building new lives in the shadow of the Great War.
de Bernieres follows them through the decades: marriage and children; careers and displacements; unbearable or stoically-borne heartbreaks. Soon, another war is upon this and these friends who were raised in the midst of an all-but-disappeared way of life (think Downton Abbey) are old enough to have fought once, and young enough to volunteer again – sometimes alongside their children.
So Much Life Left Over is ultimately an ode to what it means to be alive, the many ways large and small in which we all must compromise, the events both large and small that can derail plans in an instant. Quietly, each of these characters must learn to live with what life has inflicted, choices that de Bernieres helps his reader understand apply not only to Daniel and Rosie and Wragge and Archie. Oh, there’s humor along the way, generally courtesy of Rosie’s dotty mother, and I wouldn’t term it a tearjerker by any stretch of the imagination, but it is, nonetheless, a quietly philosophical work.
(This review was originally published at http://www.thisyearinbooks.com/2018/09/so-much-life-left-over.html)
Daniel was a legendary WWI Flying Ace, a survivor of the war now facing an immensity of endless days filled with trivialities. As a tea manufacturer in Ceylon, he has the company of Hugh who was also a pilot in the war, and a bright future in an exotic land. Daniel’s wife Rosie is pregnant with their second child.
After the war, Daniel’s brother Archie went to India, He is a risk taker and a drunk, in love with Rosie who married Daniel after her fiance died in the war. Rosie’s sister Otillie in England is in love with Archie, but he distrusts anyone who could love him. He prefers his hopeless and unrequited love for Rosie. He writes to Otillie,”You could not have been my salvation, because no one ever will be. I am one of the damned..reconciled to my fate here in this most godforsaken and lunatic corner of the Empire.”
Daniel and Archie also lost two brothers in South Africa.
‘I used to have three brothers,” he said fiercely, ‘and now I only have one. Two brothers lost to the Empire. Both killed in South Africa. My father is dead. Archie is the only brother I have left.’
Rosie’s sister Sophie married a clergyman who writes novels; they have been unable to have children. And then there is sister Christabel, a Bloomsbury Bohemian living with Gaskell, two women artists who long for a child. Gaskell tells Daniel, “We are looking for a new way to live…There must be a better way of doing things.” They later involve Daniel in their ‘new way.’
The war haunts Daniel and Rosie. For the moment they are living on the tea plantation like kings in paradise, expecting a second child. But happiness is elusive, and their marriage is imperiled by tragedy. Rosie retreats into religion leaving Daniel to find love elsewhere. Daniel dearly loves his children, especially his eldest, Esther. But as the marriage falls apart the children become pawns.
Their generation fought to save civilization. Louis De Bernieres writes that returning to civilian life, some men became drunks while others turned inward, some embraced the new world while others returned to their old life repressing the war into distant memory. Each character has been scared and altered by the war.
“Mr. Wragge was content in his modest paradise. After the death marches, and the months of tunneling in the mountains with a pick, this English garden was indeed a dream of Eden…Oily Wragge was determined to salvage his sanity out of the purgatorial experience of captivity.”
So Much Life Left Over was a wonderful read, with gorgeous writing and interesting, conflicted characters. Daniel and Rosie and their families were wonderfully drawn. There are moments of humor and scenes of great sorrow. Even the minor characters, like Rosie’s mother Mrs. McCosh and Oily Wragge are memorable.
Daniel and Mr. Wragge go to Germany to start a motorcycle business with former POWs Daniel had captured and befriended. Daniel witnesses firsthand the rising anti-Semitism that fuels the rise of Hitler. The dynamics are eerily familiar and disturbing. Nearly 100 years later, and we seem to be repeating history.
The novel continues the story in The Dust that Falls From Dreams, which I had not read and which one does not need to have read to enjoy this book. So Much Life Left Over has an open ending, with Daniel making a momentous decision. I felt I knew what he decides, but I am sure there is going to be another volume to continue his story. In the meantime, I do want to read more by de Bernieres, who also wrote Corelli’s Violin.
I received a free ebook from the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.