On holiday in August I'm in a pleasurable mode and looking for a
book which asks searching questions about the way we live our
lives. This year the book I just couldn't put down was Bragg's
latest novel, a sparely written story of a working-class father
returning from World War II to his wife and seven-year-old son in
Cumbria. The celebrations are over, the bunting is down, and Sam
Richardson finds that the home he dreamed about while he was away
fighting in Burma is not the one he has returned to. His prewar job
has gone; his boy, Joe, is bewildered by this bullying intruder who
comes between him and his mother, and thinks Joe's a sissy. The
father in his turn cannot find the words to explain to those he
loves all that he has been through. It is hard not to feel this
beautifully constructed novel, with its telling insights into a
difficult father/son relationship, is at least in part about
Bragg's own childhood. Review by LISA JARDINE It's hard to know
where to position Bragg's novels. Does he see himself as an Arnold
Bennett or a J B Priestley? Surely rural Cumbria doesn't offer the
same rich pickings as the Potteries or the Yorkshire mill towns.
But he uses the Lake District, familiar from his childhood, as a
background against which he can explore themes of sex, class,
romance and, in The Soldier's Return, the disruption caused when a
father returns from Malaya in the spring of 1946 to resume his
place as the head of the family. Bragg tells his story vividly when
dealing with the boy Joe, aged six, who was a baby when his father
left for the war. Joe has to painfully learn to love the real man
after being accustomed to a dad who was merely a framed photograph
he said goodnight to before his ever-present, loving mother carried
him up to bed. Does Joe relect a good deal of Melvyn who passed his
own boyhood at the same period, in much the same surroundings? When
you read about the carnival day in Wigton, the town where the story
is set, it comes over as if you were there. The author knows this
neck of the woods and loves it. The drawback for me was that I was
not convinced enough by the retiring soldier and his beautiful wife
Ellen. I wanted to know more about their inner motives. But this is
a quibble since their story will please all Melvyn Bragg's regular
readers. And especially those brought up in the austere 1940s, who
lived through the war and those long separations which brought such
complications to civilian life. Very weepy, filmy ending which I
shall not divulge. Review by MAVIS NICHOLSON (Kirkus UK)
'Unsentimental, truthful and wonderful' Beryl Bainbridge,
Independent Books of the Year When Sam Richardson returns in 1946
from the 'Forgotten War' in Burma to Wigton in Cumbria, he finds
the town little changed. But the war has changed him, broadening
his horizons as well as leaving him with traumatic memories. In
addition, his six-year-old son now barely remembers him, and his
wife has gained a sense of independence from her wartime jobs. As
all three strive to adjust, the bonds of loyalty and love are
stretched to breaking point in this taut, and profoundly moving
novel. 'An outstandingly good novel...utterly credible, utterly
compelling, and very enjoyable' Allan Massie, Scotsman 'Deeply
felt, beautifully realised' John Sutherland, Sunday Times 'The
first Great War came alive in Faulks's Birdsong; the second Great
War, and in particular the Burma campaign, comes very much alive in
Melvyn Bragg's The Soldier's Return - wholly absorbing' John
Bayley, Evening Standard 'Sympathetic, touching, infinitely
believable...This is a highly accomplished novel' D.J. Taylor,
Literary Review
General
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