Stay Where You Are and the Leave, by John Boyne

This is the third book of John Boyne’s that I’ve read (the first two being The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and The Terrible Thing that Happened to Barnaby Brockett), and the first thing that comes to mind is what a marvelously accomplished author he is because each of those three have been entirely different from one another.

Stay Where You Are and then Leave is the story of Alfie and his dad. Everything changes on Alfie’s fifth birthday: 28 July, 1914; the day that World War One began. Well, technically everything changes the day after Alfie’s fifth birthday – because that’s the day his dad, Georgie, comes home in a soldier’s uniform. Since then there have been no more birthday parties, no more playing in the street with his best friend Kalena. Now his mum works as a nurse and does laundry and mending for a posh woman over the way. And Alfie, nine years old now, shines shoes – secretly, mind (his mother doesn’t know) – at Kings Cross Station to help put pennies in his mum’s purse.

At first his dad wrote all the time, cheery letters about his training, but then they started talking about terrible things and Alfie’s mum, Margie, stopped reading them to Alfie. And now there aren’t any letters at all – Margie keeps telling Alfie it’s because his dad is on a secret mission and he can’t write. But then, when he’s cleaning shoes at the station one day, his client drops a sheaf of papers. Helping him pick them up Alfie, spots the magic name and number: Summerfield, George. Serial no.: 14278. At the top of the paper it reads: East Suffolk and Ipswich Hospital.

And so Alfie hatches a plan: first, to go to the hospital and find his dad. Second, to bring Georgie home. But while Georgie doesn’t look like he’s injured, he’s not dad as Alfie remembers him, and he keeps saying things that don’t make any sense, like “Stay where you are and then leave. Stay where you are and then leave”. Nonetheless, he’s sure that if he can just bring him home, Georgie will be the same again. But what happens if the plan goes wrong?

This is heartrending reminder of the tragedies and intricacies of the First World War, beautifully and deftly written. From the “conchie” who lives down the street, the disappearance of Alfie’s best friend and her Czech-born father, the struggles of the hospital staff to get shell shock recognized as a genuine illness rather than mere cowardice, the snippets of trench life in Georgie’s letters, Boyne quietly builds a picture of the upheavals, the rights and the wrongs and the greys of “the war to end all wars.” Alfie doesn’t always fully understand the conversations he hears – like what “conchie” or “shell shock” means – but Boyne explains them simply and carefully for readers, either directly or through the development of his story.

And then there’s the general state of the world at this time, regardless of the war itself: the food provided for Alfie’s party includes stewed tripe, cold tongue and jellied eels (luxuries for the Summerfield family); Alfie has to cut up newspaper squares for use in the lavatory at the bottom of the garden; milk is delivered by horse and cart, sweets sold from glass jars at the shop on the corner. It’s an entirely different world from today in a million and one ways. This was a world set in its ways, a world on the verge of massive an unimaginable upheaval. A world almost as innocent as Alfie.  As a 21st century girl, it’s sad and fascinating and intriguing to think of what it must have been like to live through this amazing yet utterly tragic period of time, of the consequences and the horror that everyone had to live with for all their days afterward.

Boyne encompasses all of this, somehow, in a simple story about a boy and his love for his father. For, although it’s a story about a war, a story about a white feather and about a train journey and about a secret, ultimately it is a story about love, and how it tears us apart and ties us together.

Torn, by David Massey

Torn is a book that I am finding quite hard to quantify. It turned out to be much better than I had thought it was going to be. This was a very pleasant surprise, especially when several books I’ve read lately have started off really well and then lost momentum toward the end.

The story follows Private Elinor Nielson on her first tour in Afghanistan. She’s nineteen years old, has just qualified as a medic, and has been sent to an FOB - Forward Operating Base - in the Helmand Province. Not only does her first patrol go badly, but her immediate officer in charge, Heidi, quickly takes a dislike to her for no real, discernible reason.

I found the first couple of chapters difficult because I couldn't help questioning the authenticity both of Ellie’s behaviour and of the behaviour of others around her. Would a newly minted soldier on her first patrol really take the sort of actions that Ellie does? Would her superiors really put her in the position where she felt the need to behave in this manner? And would Heidi really talk to her captain the way she does? I had to wonder what research or experience the author, David Massey, had. Before picking up the book, I assumed that in order for him to write realistically about modern warfare he must have served in Afghanistan himself, but quickly found myself questioning this assumption.

Yet Torn develops in the most intriguing of ways. Who is the little girl in the blue dress Ellie keeps seeing? I she a displaced, lost child? A ghost? Or perhaps even an angel? Rather than just trying to represent the daily grind of life on the front, Massey develops this subtle and revealing plotline which takes the reader closer to the heart of the Afghan war and builds in a mystery that forced me to keep turning the pages. Ellie and her team are tasked with identifying a group of fighter children who call themselves the Young Martyrs - where they come from and why are they here? Aroush, the girl in the blue dress, is somehow tied up with them, as is a western journalist, and what looks set to be quite a conspiracy, likely to turn many heads and pose many ethical questions back home in Britain.

Through the medium of this story, and the search for the truth of what happened to the Young Martyrs and their village, Massey introduces a number of different aspects, complications and horrors of war, particularly the manner in which all the different factions are pitted against one another, with everyday civilians stuck in the middle, unable to escape and unable to determine their own destinies. There are scenes of death and warfare, but he treats them respectfully, drawing the reader in to feel the adrenaline of the moment and the sorrow of the loss without overdoing it or sensationalising it. It is a subtle and effective form of writing well refined for the teenage age-group. A love story is there too, but it is a quiet, tantalising love story that does not overshadow the main focus of the book, instead just adding that little extra contrast, helping to keep the reader in tune with the other events.

Overall this is a bittersweet book, with a dramatic ending. Ellie and her team cannot undo what happened to the Young Martyrs, but they can help to make amends. This, of course, is a truth of war. It’s not pretty, but if you can create hope, then perhaps there can be light at the end of the tunnel. Massey does not and cannot solve the greater problem, especially as we continue to have people out there fighting as I write, but he leaves us feeling hopeful that these are people trying to do the right thing and see their way through terrible circumstances.

The Yellow Birds, by Kevin Powers

John Bartle is at war: at war with himself and with the apathy of his fellow human beings, and he is at war - both physically and mentally - with Iraq. Told in alternating chapters, one in Iraq, one after Iraq, The Yellow Birds is Bartle’s story of being a soldier, of being in the middle of a small number of events, a handful of days in the desert city of Al Tafar, and then of coming home, of being haunted by his experiences and his actions, of never really being able to come home at all.

The opening quote of this book, before the first chapter begins, is a U.S. Marching Cadence:

                                   A yellow bird

                                With a yellow bill

Was perched upon

My windowsill

I lured him in 

With a piece of bread

And then I smashed

His fucking head...

I don’t think Kevin Powers could have chosen anything more apt, summing up as it does both his book and warfare in general in a few simply chosen words. Not that a single word of The Yellow Birds could be described as simply chosen; not one single word or syllable is out of place this book, each one having a point and a meaning and a beauty behind it. It is incredibly powerful and incredibly moving. It is sad and it made me cry, and it made me think and wonder, and yet, somehow, it did not make me feel lost at the end, as some books of this ilk are like to do. It is Powers' attempt to answer the question I suspect he himself, as an Iraq veteran, has been asked many times: what was it like over there?

I could try to tell the bones of the story, of Bartle’s promise to Murphy’s mother to keep him safe and all that ensues, but the real story is that of a lost man and the undoing of war. According to his bio, Powers joined the army when he was just 17, serving in Iraq in 2004 and 2005, then gaining a university degree and poetry fellowship after leaving. Although a work of fiction, while reading The Yellow Birds I had to wonder how much of Powers is in Bartle, and how much of Powers’ own experiences are in the things Bartle sees and feels.

The tension is mixed with passages of descriptive writing that offset each other all in one small instance. It is both calm and horrifying all at the same time. When he is in Iraq, Bartle sees things that bring memories of home, and when he is home, everything he sees brings memories of Iraq. There is a blurring of real and unreal, of memories and experiences and emotions that are vivid in their detail and their telling. Powers writes of war as a living thing that consumes and rages without boundaries, eating away everything in its path, and left me asking the question, not what was it like over there?, but how do you find yourself again?

And, as Bartle struggles with both the war and its aftermath, I found myself thinking about the people that are abroad now, fighting. I see their images on TV, their bravado and their bravery, their interactions with the locals and their comrades, and I take it at face value. Reading his book, Powers made me ask, what goes on underneath the picture on TV or the story in the newspaper? This is part of the power and the importance of The Yellow Birds - it brings to the forefront not questions so much, but the concept that there is more out there than what we may chose to see on any given day, more than a soldier may chose to reveal. The Yellow Birds is, undoubtedly, the war book of the year.