Chris Cleave is one of those novelists you may well have heard of, whether or not you’ve read any of his books. His eerily prescient debut, Incendiary – narrated by a widow who has lost both her husband and young son in a terror attack orchestrated by Osama bin Laden – was published on the day of the 7/7 bombings in London. His second novel, The Other Hand, about the harrowing experiences of a 16-year-old Nigerian girl and her interactions with a middle-class London family, became an international bestseller in the summer of 2009. And his third novel, Gold, published on the eve of the London Olympics, told the story of three cyclists preparing for the 2012 Games.
What Cleave’s first three novels share is a timeliness, an immersion in the political and social issues and events that have shaped the past decade. It is a departure, therefore, that Cleave’s fourth, Everyone Brave Is Forgiven, is a historical novel set in London and Malta during the second world war. The story is, Cleave discloses in an author’s note, inspired by the lives of his grandparents: his maternal grandfather served in Malta, and his paternal grandmother drove ambulances during the blitz. But dig below the surface of this novel, and Cleave is back in familiar thematic territory, exploring the ways that external events beyond the individual’s control influence the private lives of his characters, with either devastating or transformative consequences.
The novel follows four protagonists from the outbreak of war to the summer of 1942. Mary North is the privileged daughter of an MP who signs up for the war effort within 45 minutes of its declaration: “She left finishing school unfinished.” She is assigned a school-teaching job, initially an unappealing prospect but one for which she soon discovers a natural aptitude. Through the job she meets Tom Shaw, head of the local education authority and, despite the class difference – or perhaps because of it, given Mary’s maverick, rebellious nature – the two embark on a love affair. Meanwhile, Tom’s friend and flatmate, Alistair Heath, a picture restorer at the Tate, signs up for active duty, eventually deploying to Malta to defend the island amid harrowing and demoralising conditions. Completing the quartet is Mary’s best friend, Hilda, the ugly duckling in their friendship duo.
Throughout the novel, Cleave portrays the visceral experiences of war with skill and empathy, whether it’s Alistair’s repeated near annihilation in Malta or the catastrophic effects of the blitz. There are moments of genuine terror – particularly during Mary and Hilda’s ordeals as ambulance drivers attending to London’s bombed-out victims – in which Cleave reveals his talent for pacing and tension. His engagement with themes of racism, class, female empowerment and the emotional dislocations induced by war lend the novel social and historical depth in scenes that are both intricately researched and evocatively conveyed.
Cleave has sometimes been accused of sentimentality (albeit with the caveat that he does sentimentality extremely well), and this latest novel too pulls on the reader’s heartstrings: “…all he wanted from his city was the thing that didn’t seem to be on offer: the possibility of coming home”. But even the most cynical reader will be hard pushed to be unmoved by the pitch-perfect final line, concluding the story on a note of quiet hope and narrative symmetry.
With Everyone Brave Is Forgiven Cleave cements his reputation as a skilful storyteller, and a sensitive chronicler of the interplay between the political and the personal. As one character observes: “Who knows what takes more courage – to die in battle, or to live in vain? It cuts all of us in two, I suppose.”
Everyone Brave Is Forgiven is published by Sceptre, £14.99. Click here to buy it for £11.99
