That Summer
Andrew Greig Faber, 261pp, £9.99
ISBN 0571204236
On the 60th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, the prize-winning novelist and poet Andrew Greig has produced a novel about a love affair between Len, a 22-year-old fighter pilot, and Stella, a radar operator. He dedicates his novel "to the vanishing generation", and it is clear that this charming love story set in the summer of 1940 is a modern reworking of the elegy in its classic form. It is a song of lamentation for the dead. What also becomes clear is that the novel has its origins in Greig's 1986 poetic collaboration with Kathleen Jamie, A Flame in Your Heart (Bloodaxe Books). The narrative poems of this collection provide the structure for That Summer.
There are three narrators. Len - earnest, perceptive and ingenuous - confides in his diary after each foray into the skies, conveying the heat of the action, the numbness that accompanies killing, the terror of imminent death. Stella's voice supplies the emotional intelligence of a woman just one year older than Len, but with the benefits of a university education and two previous lovers. It is an un-named narrator, however, who has the first and last words, and who provides the historical overview.
When Len and Stella eventually meet, it is inevitable that they will fall in love. Greig reveals the irresistible glamour of a handsome young pilot, risking all for his country, to a steadfast young woman, keen to do her bit. They go to "the flicks, something by the Marx Brothers"; they go to country pubs, RAF dances, and fraternise with dashing Polish pilots. The class system buckles, enabling the lower- middle-class Len to dally with the middle-class Stella who, in turn, is delighted by her new friendships with the decidedly upper-class Foxy Farringdon and the cheerfully working-class Maddy.
So there is all the fun and camaraderie of the war to be had, and the joyful recklessness that comes with not knowing what tomorrow may bring. Greig animates the pathos and energy of that time. He also recreates with subtlety the horror of bombing raids and the deaths of friends and family. A thick skin is essential; emotional and physical exhaustion can always be assuaged (some R&R for Len, a shopping trip to London for Stella). For Greig, it is one's personal morality that takes the worst beating. When Stella is forced to relinquish the empathy she once felt for her opposite number, the imaginary Fraulein across the Channel - who is "my twin, my sister, my mirror. My enemy who is not my enemy" - and relocate her as the "Enemy", we recognise the shift in her moral vision. Or as Len puts it, having despatched yet another enemy bomber: "What has become of us?"
Greig's achievement is in explicating the mystery of what lay behind the exigencies of love and friendship in wartime England.
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