A day or so later I was in Plymouth and walked into a used bookshop near Sutton Harbour. First book I spotted was Requiem for a Wren! I was fated to buy the book. Glorious read and the first "war book" that spoke of the postwar stresses... not PTSD but "war is over! what shall I do now" stress. I've heard a second hand tale from one children of a war veteran (RAF Group Captain) who said "the war years were the best years of my life" and then he added "never tell that to your mother". All of this plays into Shute's story and is worked beautifully into a story of love, war, regret and family. While the author pulls no punches, he does not dramatize, he tells it like it was, laying bare the hearts of the characters. Even knowing of the eventual end of the pivotal character does not take away from the dramatic tension Shute creates throughout the story. He brings us to slow realizations in a wonderfully artistic manner, dawn breaking finally revealing the true depth of each character. I'm trying to guess how many books I've read which in one way or another are about the Second World War. I've read a couple just in the last month, Wilcox's Japan's Secret War and Linebarger's Psychological Warfare. As usual, I was gripped by two contradictory emotions: horror and fascination. I think most people have a similar reaction. The war was monstrous and appalling, but it was also the most exciting, extraordinary period in human history. New techniques, new ideas, new ways of thinking were invented and turned into weapons within a couple of years; sometimes a couple of months. Nothing was impossible, and everyone knew what the purpose of life was. It was to win the war.

To be honest, I'm not sure your original assessment is wrong. There is all that, and it's more evident in some novels than others. When I think about it, it could be that Shute's novels are soap operas for an industrial society, rather than a financial one, which automatically gives them the appearance of rather more substance. An Old Captivity is definitely interesting; it contains the usual simplistic relationship stuff, but large parts of it consist of practical arrangements for a trip to a sub-arctic island, the detail of which is almost anti-fiction. Then you have a book like Ruined City which is a sort of capitalist fairytale and which reflects his extreme right-wing views. At some point I decided that with Shute it was best to take him book by book, if I was at all inclined to do so, and I'm not really - I've been through about half his output and the remainder are marked to read, at some point, someday. Requiem for a Wren is a sad story of the consequences of those servicemen/women who served in WWII. War may be over, but for them, it'll never be over. The ghosts of the past haunt them, the guilt weighs them, and an unexplainable restlessness possesses them. They know that they must put the past behind them and adapt to civil life as best as they could. But this is not easy. The late 1940s story concerns two English women, Wrens, and two Australian brothers. It is narrated by one of the brothers, Alan Duncan. His elder brother, Bill, a Royal Marine frogman, has been killed in action, and Alan is now returning to his wealthy parents' prosperous sheep station (ranch) in Australia. Alan has studied as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University and fought as a RAF pilot in World War II before being injured in action, losing both feet when his plane crashed. He has recently qualified as a barrister ( called to the bar) in England. removed until everyone who knew those exciting times is gone, is short-sighted and overly dramatic.The mysterious death of a young woman on an Australian farm reveals a heartrending story of doomed wartime romance

Like some infernal monster, still venomous in death, a war can go on killing people for a long time after it’s all over. Lccn 70552632 Ocr tesseract 4.1.1 Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 0.9810 Ocr_module_version 0.0.7 Ocr_parameters -l eng Old_pallet IA400068 Openlibrary_edition It's still great. I'd forgotten about the Irish Terrier, Dev. I used to have Irish Terriers and I loved both dearly, Bridget, then Colleen. Naturally, it made the story all the better. Acronyms and technical military, nautical and aeronautical terms, as well as terms for weaponry and arms, frequent the text. This adds a sense authenticity. The author doesn’t define these terms but with the help of adjacent explanations lay readers come to understand what is meant. The is well done. However, in expressing things several times and in different ways there is quite a bit of repetition which is at times annoying. Too often a reader is told of events rather than experiencing and living them firsthand, as they occur. This is what you need to know about the author’s writing style.

Requiem for a Wren

However, novels like this rise or fall on their characters. Shute does a great job exploring how each of the surviving characters processes the war and the long years after the war. Some of the characters adapt and move on as best they can. Some don’t move on and Shute explores their agony with respect. Alan is a decent and good man, but he has flaws and the novel traces how he resolves his past mistakes by actually learning from the experience of his brother and the Wren. Oddly enough, one of Shute’s biggest failings is one of the things I love about his work. As I have noted previously, and as Kim notes in her review of On the Beach, Shute’s writing cannot be called elegant. In Kim’s words: Setting aside my few complaints, I enjoyed the story immensely. The characters were so well drawn I felt like I knew each one of them. As I got to know Janet I kept hoping that she, who committed suicide at the beginning, would somehow be found alive.... perhaps the dead body was mis-identified ....and the ending would be a happy one, as I've come to expect from Shute. Shute's talent for description allowed me to feel like I was right there in the Australian family home/estate/sheep farm looking out at the gorgeous rural landscapes. Equally effective were the descriptions of the other settings in France, England, and America. Have you listened to any of Damien Warren-Smith’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

Nevil Shute was extremely popular in the 1940s and 50s. He wrote in a straightforward, highly readable style on subjects that he knew about. Thus it is not surprising that there are quite a few technical references in this book, especially to equipment used in the Normandy landings of 1944 (Shute, an officer in the RNVR, was actually present at D-Day) but these are easily comprehensible to the ordinary listener. The atmosphere and tension of those weeks before the invasion is very well caught.

Shute reveals the end at the beginning, but only part of it, the devastating part. A young woman's suicide that seemingly has no rhyme or reason starts the returning home Aussie pilot on a journey through his past. The attention to detail is fantastic and the reader learns much about the nitty gritty of maintaining the gunnery parts of British WWII ships. I had no idea that there was such a thing as Ordinance Wrens in the War. They were an integral part of the War Effort and they suffered as much of what we know now as PTSD as any of the soldiers that saw action.