Book #21: Everyone Brave is Forgiven by Chris Cleave

I feel a little wary of WWII novels, because I have read so, so many that I wonder how there can possibly be anything else anyone can write that would be interesting to read about WWII. I resist reading WWII books that I hear about until I get a solid recommendation on one, like I finally got about this one. I heard it was so, so good that I didn't want to pass this one up. I downloaded it to my Kindle while I was in the hospital and I've been reading it since we got home. Truly, I loved it. The first half was a little slower for me and harder to get into, but then I couldn't put it down the rest of the time. And there were some truly beautifully written parts that stood out so much to me and made it so meaningful to read.

This book follows three young people through their experiences of the first few years of the war: Mary, Tom, and Alistair. Mary and Tom are in London during the Blitz of 1940 and 1941, and Alistair is a soldier in Malta during the siege there. The thing that stood out to me was the horror and terror of the bombings throughout London, and how those bombings affected the people and their relationships and their lives. The children of London were sent to live in rural towns, thousands of people were killed over every night, everyone had to hide in their bomb shelters every night to survive. I had never pictured or imagined the bombings in their tangible effects as well as Cleave imagines them here. I loved following Mary North in her growth from an idealistic, stubborn, somewhat naive rich girl and her ultimate disillusionment from what she thought was possible with the world. She was determined to do something exciting and world-changing for the war effort, was assigned to be a teacher, lost her class of students in a bombing that she escaped from, drove ambulances for the war effort, almost died in a horrible freak accident, and got addicted to morphine to deal with her fears and horrible PTSD. She doesn't come through it all unscathed, or even necessarily better. But she has survived and is made stronger. Alistair's story about the siege of Malta is similarly crazy.

One thing that was simultaneously awesome and annoying about this book was the style of conversation between the characters. Every character was super quick and sharp and sarcastic and even cynical. They were always witty and came up with a great response to everyone. I didn't feel like it was super realistic, because how can everyone be like that? But it was fun to read, so it was hard to mind too much.

I think one of my favorite parts of this story was the fact that in the afterword, the author talks about how this story is based on the lives of his grandparents who lived through WWII in London. Mary is based on the experiences of his two grandmothers, and his grandfather did a lot of the things that Alistair did as well. I thought that was such an interesting way to honor the experiences of his grandparents and to do family history--I loved that.