Private Peaceful – Michael Morpurgo

“I’ve seen larks over no-mans land. I always found hope in that.”

I read this book because I was telling a boy I baby-sit for how I had suddenly found myself extremely moved by books about the war. I recommended he read The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and, in return, he gave me this book to borrow.

Tommo Peaceful is just a child when the story begins. His father has passed away and he lives in England with his mother and his older brothers, Charlie and Joe. On his first day at ‘big school’, Tommo meets Molly. He falls instantly in love with her.

As Tommo, Molly and Charlie grow into young adults together, Tommo realises that his brother has fallen in love with the same girl. Worse than that, Molly returns his love. In a moment of madness and full of eagerness to prove that he is not a little boy anymore, Tommo signs up to join the army. Desperate to project his brother, Charlie signs up too.

From the start we are aware that things go wrong for Charlie and Tommo. Parts of the book are written in the present tense, whilst the rest is reflecting on occasions from their childhood. Tommo’s musings over his current situation divulge enough that we know that he has found himself in an incredulous situation, the details of which are not revealed until the last few pages. I anticipated predictability, but the ending is politely surprising, desperately sad and, as is mostly the case with novels for young people, there is teaching behind it. I don’t want to divulge too much more in case I ruin it for anybody.

This is a novel for older children, so it’s easy to read. If you had a day you could probably manage it in one. Even as a ‘grown up’, I can confess that I did learn something from it.

It isn’t so overly horrific that you couldn’t give it to your teenager. I think it would probably make them think more carefully about the sacrifice boys not much older than them made during the war and, in my opinion, that can only be a good thing.

If you’re an avid reader then I’m not sure you will like this, unless you are extremely open minded or a teenage boy. If you don’t plan on reading it but you have been left intrigued as to what happened, then feel free to ask me about the story. Or Google it. 

Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis de Bernieres

“After the war...”

Whilst reading Captain Corelli’s Mandolin there stirred in me as much surprise as when I read Birdsong. It is a book about the devastating impact of war on young people in the early 1900s.

Pelagia is a beautiful teenager living on the island of Cephallonia. Brought up without a mother, her father has turned her into a forward thinking, intelligent young woman. Still, she falls easily for the charms of a local fisherman. When war tears them apart, she allows herself to become obsessed with his lack of response to her letters. Convinced that he has forgotten her, she forces herself to forget him.

Later in the war, after her fiancé has returned, admitted he cannot read and write and then disappeared to fight again, Pelagia meets Captain Antonio Corelli, who is placed within her home as part of the Italian occupation of her island. He is a man so full of charm that the locals refer to him as the ‘crazy captain’, and he falls absolutely in love with her.

When the Italians turn on the Germans and the British fail to evacuate them, Corelli and Pelagia are faced with their own mortality. The war brought them together and it is about to tear them apart. In a world in which war is everywhere, they are just one couple in millions trying to navigate their love through a world of destruction.

This book is, at heart, a love story. I fell in love with it almost immediately. The beginning is reasonably slow. You will find yourself waiting for Corelli to arrive and he doesn’t until almost a third of the way through, but towards the end it becomes entirely obvious why we needed to read about a time when Corelli did not exist in Pelagia’s life. It is so that we can fall in love with her father, with the gentle giant in the village, with the pets that she takes care of and the olive tree in her garden. It is necessary for us to fall in love with these things so that we can be devastated when everything is ripped apart.

I fell in love with Antonio Corelli and I think that it is very important that this happens when a woman reads a love story. I also found myself remembering those who were both young and old during the war, the alternative impact it had on their lives in relation to their age, the experiences they shared and the events that they witnessed. I cried and I laughed when I read it.

At the end I had learned some lessons. Like how important it is not to waste time. And how detrimental it can be not to tell the truth about the way that you feel. And how stubbornness can ruin lives. And how, even though we might grow old, we are always going to be the exact same people. Thirty-two pages before the end I started crying, and I didn’t stop until there were just two pages left. On those two I laughed. 

I recommend this book if you love Birdsong, romance novels or war literacy, but to be honest I think it’s a great book for anybody. I learnt stuff and felt stuff. I don’t know what more you could want from a novel. Highly recommended.

The Hundred-Year Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared – Jonas Jonasson

“It had been exciting, the entire journey, but nothing lasts forever, except possibly general stupidity.”

I bought this book because I had already heard about it when it was for sale for £0.20 on Kindle, so I thought I would give it a go. The title is far too long for me to keep typing it, so I will be referring to it as ‘The Hundred-Year Old Man” from now on. People seem to know which book you mean when you call it that, anyway.

The Hundred-Year Old Man tells the story of Allan Karlsson – a man about to celebrate his 100^th birthday. In the beginning, Allan is sitting in his room at an old people’s home in his slippers. He is waiting for his party to start. Journalists are invited, as are the local dignitaries. Everyone is making a fuss, and Allan decides he has had about enough. Given the stories title, what happens next is utterly predictable. Allan climbs out of his window, slippers still attached, and runs away.

What is not predictable is pretty much everything that happens next. Allan embarks on an adventure of epic proportions. It involves a suitcase full of money, a bus ride to nowhere, a group of criminals, an elephant and a beauty. Allan is first suspected of being kidnapped, and then accused by the local press of being a murderer. He locks a man in a fridge, leaves his slippers behind and goes on the run. Well. It’s more of a stroll. Allan can’t walk very fast.

The public, papers and police can’t believe the stories about Allan are true. He is, after all, a hundred year old man! But had they any idea who they were actually chasing, they would have had very little doubt about what Allan Karlsson is capable of doing. Accidentally, of course. Allan’s current story is interrupted every few chapters with tales of a past that includes dinner with Chairman Mao, the development of the atom bomb, and Albert Einstein’s stupid brother Herbert.

This book was very funny in a way that only books can manage. Allan Karlsson is particularly hilarious. He is written as a character who has that incredible bluntness old people possess without knowing it. I could imagine my grandparents saying some of the things he says, and then staring at me quizzically when I laugh about it.

It was a great story, but I think it was slightly above my intelligence level. It was like ‘Forrest Gump’ for clever people. Though I laughed out loud several times, I am certain that I missed a lot of the irony. I just don’t know enough about key events in the twentieth century.

It is slightly predictable in parts, once you have reached the gist that anything can happen to Allan Karlsson, but it was obviously written that way. I was suitably satisfied with the ending. Everything was tied-up as it should be.

This book is perfect for people who love history and read for entertainment, but suitably enjoyable for all if you happen to stumble across it.