The Book of Part Four, Fortunes of War

books:

	• The Levant Trilogy Olivia Manning Phoenix (an Imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd ), 2003 - 592 pages average customer review:based on 4 reviews view larger image
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To Love And To Cherish

The big complaint I had concerning Olivia Manning's Balkan Trilogy (in what was otherwise a generally favourable review) was that it was too far removed from the war, that it was centred too much around Guy and Harriet Pringle and their retinue and marital squabbles while there was a bleeding war afoot. Other readers must have had something of the same reaction, for Manning gives a fair go here at depicting things from someone else's point of view than Harriet's in the form of second lieutenant Simon Boulderstone's (Where O where did you get that surname Olivia?) perspective from the front lines against Rommel's desert campaign.

But, perhaps predictably, it doesn't last, and Simon is invalided out of the war before too long and becomes another player in the grand dance of Guy and Harriet - from Harriet's/Olivia's point of view of course, until the last few pages. This is, perhaps, just as well; for this is the sort of writing at which Manning excels. I actually began to feel that this trilogy was a bit too cramped. I began to long for the large cast of characters and rich pageant of The Balkan Trilogy.

So, yes there's a war on here, and the sorts of horrific, madcap events that occur in a war are depicted here: One day you are out painting and your toddler son picks up a live hand grenade and is blown apart, you and your chummy batsman drive your jeep under a tree for a bit of tuck-in and he cops it as the jeep hits a land mine, a man arrives to tell a husband that the wife that he has thought dead for months is alive and well, waiting downstairs, a few weeks later that man himself dies of typhoid, and so on. One moment here, the next moment not.

But what this book is really about is marriage and whether IT can be survived. Harriet's trials are quite harrowing and ring true. "I want more love than I am given - but where am I to find it?" she asks at one point. At another we find her desperately contemplating:

She shook her head: `I don't know. But what does anyone see in anyone? Perhaps that's what Yeats meant by "love's bitter mystery"!'

For those interested, the quote is from the poem "Who Goes with Fergus?"

In the end, one gets the feeling that marriage, if possible, is something to be endured. Be all this as it may, the great thing about this trilogy - indeed, about all of Manning's writing - is her genius for description. Here, just at random, is her description of someplace between the Suez Canal and Damascus:

"Sitting with the tarpaulin over her hair, she looked out on wild and empty hill country patched light and dark by the sun and cloud. On one side the sea, disturbed by the wind, rolled in on a desert shore. On the other were hills, rocky and bare except for the fur of grass. Black clouds and white clouds wound and unwound, sometimes revealing a stretch of clear blue sky. The rain slanted this way and that, cutting through broad rays of light, one moment pouring down, the next coming abruptly to a stop." P.405

Passages like these make it all worthwhile. Manning seems to have been gifted with a lyrical, photographic memory of people, places and things and uses that gift to marvellous effect here as well as in The Balkan Trilogy.

Still, standing alone, this book really doesn't do too well I'm afraid. It comes across as a disjointed and soap operatic by itself. It truly has to be read with the memories and heft of The Balkan trilogy fresh in one's mind for its full impact to be appreciated. With that caveat in mind, five glowing stars in the desert sky! Even I was choked up when turning the final pages.

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a quibble over history

I loved this book. The description of the civilians and the military were educational and interesting. I do object to a German submarine operating in the Indian Ocean. I don't think it was factually possible. The distance would have been too far from a refueling base. In spite of this, it was a fun read.

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The Book of Part Four, Fortunes of War

After seeing the DVD "Fortunes of War" I borrowed author Olivia Manning's "Balkan Trilogy" and "Levant Trilogy" from a friend. I was so caught up in the action that, had time allowed, I would have read all six at a sitting; now I am buying copies of both Trilogies to read at leisure.
"The Danger Tree" is the first book in the Levant Trilogy, book four in the series that traces the fortunes and misfortunes of Guy and Harriet Pringle, arrived in Egypt as refugees from the war in Europe, having barely escaped from Athens. The book follows the course of the Desert War through the young, inexperienced British officer Simon Boulderstone, who is badly wounded.
Guy, unfit for military service, is a lecturer with the British Arts Council. In Egpyt he can only get a commercial teaching job in Alexandria, Harriet works in the American Embassy in Cairo until the US entry to war and, as an alien, she has to find other work. Their separation puts a strain on their wartime marriage which was already under stress before they had to leave Greece.
This can only be the barest outline of a complex, superbly written series on war, as experienced by civilians, and of selfishness and mediocrity when all are in peril (in the persons of the odius Dubedat, Lush and Professor Lord Pinkrose) triumphing over excellence as this unlovely trio also retreat from the advancing Germans.
There is pathos, there is humour, there is the human condition in this, and the rest of the series which deserves to be, once more, in print, if only to alert those who know it not of the dreary uncertainties, fears and horrors of war.

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The aothor died too soon!

Olivia Manning died in 1980, shortly after having written the last Coda of her LEVANT TRILOGY. One may consider that she had not the time to finish it. The Greek War Gods had in stock more than a "piece of cake" for Simon Boulderstone, on the island of Leros. After Italy's surrender, the British tried to seize the Italian Dodecanesus and convince the neighboring Turkey to enter WWII on Allies's side. Kos was occupied on Sept.13th, 1943, then Leros, Samos and Castelorizo fell also. But the Germans reacted immediately; paratroopers landed in Kos on Oct. 3 and the British reembarked the next day. Reinforced, Leros tried to repel the German assaults, to no avail, and the garrison withdrew on Nov. 16th Samos had been already evacuated by its temporary conquerors, who tried in vain to relieve the besieged Leros. Perhaps Olivia Manning had other plans for Simon, but her project died with her. What a pity! Source: Churchill's WAR MEMORIES, vol. 9.

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