Small Wars [Hardcover]

 

 

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"Small Wars" is Sadie Jones' second novel. Her first was "The Outcast", which won all sorts of awards. I never got around to reading it, but definitely will ASAP!

"Small Wars" is about the personal toll war takes on a soldier and his family. Henry (Hal) Treherne is a graduate of Sandhurst in the mid-1940's and the son and grandson of professional soldiers. He's missed fighting in WW2 by his age, but settles down to a career in the peace time British army. After a few years on a British base in West Germany, he arrives on British-held Cyprus in the mid-1950's - a time when Cyprus was trying to gain independence from the British Empire. He also brings his wife to Cyprus, along with their toddler age twin daughters.

I didn't know anything about Sadie Jones, so midway through "Small Wars", I looked her up on Wiki. Attached to her biography was a video of a fascinating interview Jones had given a British site about her new book, "Small Wars". In the interview, Jones says that one of her reasons for writing "Small Wars" was to examine the effect that the brutalities of war had on the soldiers fighting them and she compares the Cyprus war in the 1950's to today's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And here's the problem of that vis-a-vis the book's plot line. Today's wars are fought by soldiers who have left their wives and families back home. The Cyprus war was fought by soldiers who had, in many cases, brought their families with them to Cyprus to live in supposedly safe compounds.

Jones wants to examine - and she does so very well - how a professional soldier, who sees brutalities day after day, is able to relate to his wife and family who are living with him. That is somewhat different as to how a soldier in current wars - who may witness or even participate in the same brutalities - handles the stress and strain with a partner who's NOT living with him. I just don't know if the two situations are analogous; one's immediate and the other one's delayed.

Anyway, the Trehernes are victims of a random act of violence - though maybe NOT so random - and the wife and children return to safety in England. So does Captain Treherne, who is almost shell-shocked at what he has been through. This is a beautifully written small gem of a novel that looks at people and how they are able to cope with their lives. It really is a wonderful book.

An exceptional writer whose prior novel The Outcast established her talent for compelling characterization, Sadie Jones presents a unique love story against the British colony in Cyprus in the 1950's. Major Hal Traherne is stationed for a month with his Clara wife Clara and their two daughters Meg and Lottie in Limassol, where the army has rented them a house. Amid the sounds of motorbikes and Cypriot voices, the banging shutters of other houses, Hal and Clara find themselves immersed in a war of intelligence and a war of subterfuge and of rumor. Three years of conflict so far has seen restaurant bombings and soldiers' vehicles ambushed on remote roads, along with street fights, graffiti ads and countless arrests. Certainly a fledgling desire for Cypriot independence has hardened into a terrorist campaign where the British Government is backed into a corner.

Hal, a man from a staunchly military family, is full of idealistic zeal through trying to change the Cypriots hearts and minds. The idea is for protection as well as rule and Hal is here to root out terrorism and to protect the population from it. While Clara attends to the girls, together with Adile, a Turkish Cypriot, Hal, acting on orders from his superior, Colonel Burroughs, goes away for a stint of "proper fighting." His task is to root out the terrorist Loulla Kollias, a member of the EOKA organization with the mission culminating in a raid on his farmhouse. Left alone at home Clara tries to accept the reality of their situation. The house is empty and there's evil around her, hiding itself. She didn't want Hal to think that she wasn't coping. She befriends Mark and Deirdre Innes, and later, Captain Davis who experiences a shared, unspoken sympathy for Clara that is mysterious and comforting. Davis is battered by his obsession with Clara or perhaps by love.

Cushioned by familiar desire and rejection, Jones' novel centers in the moral dilemmas of Hal and Clara, and that of Davis who becomes romantically fixated on the wife of a man whose authority and principle he admires and resents in equal measure. While Clara seems to be immune to the careless beauty of the world, and the soft shifting of her new baby inside of her, Hal dreads the darkness where the smallest defiant act could extinguish another British life. Alone in his command, he can feel the shifting mood around him: "A clarity of purpose, there was division and grief." Beyond Hal and Clara's fragile love story are the scenes of violence and turmoil - an ambush in a cave with twenty jerry-cans of petrol, the screaming of the men loud and echoing. And a land mine explosion on a beach, the two dead soldiers, along with graphic descriptions of carnage and blood and sand, a horse shot, sand on its breathless muzzle. The recreation of Hal's battles are chillingly atmospheric, filled with authentic historical detail and the empty despair of Britain as she tries to keep her slender grasp on Empire.

Later in the novel as the focus shifts from Cyrus to England, Cypriots and soldiers continue to play out the long game of complicity and enmity welcome and rebellion. The bloodshed entrenching each position as firmly as the friendship did. Peppered with complex characters, with Hal and Clara undoubtedly at the center, this novel paints a compelling portrait of a country on the edge, a soldier and his wife trapped in a rapidly disintegrating world, even as their love for each other continues to hold strong. Hal's only solace seems to be back in the arms of Clara, where the soft things happen to him as he lurches between disintegration and the struggle for control. Mike Leonard March 2010.

London based author Sadie Jones won us with her critically acclaimed debut novel THE OUTCAST. She was praised for "her lush writing and tantalizing sense of setting and detail." So true, and all of this is at the fore once more with SMALL WARS, a deeply affecting story of love and loyalty.

We first meet Hal Treherne as a cadet at a Sandhurst passing-out parade in 1946. As Princess Elizabeth moves down the line during inspection Hal "knew that she was the embodiment of his country, that he was doing his best to please and that he always would."

Action segues quickly to a volatile Cyprus in 1956. Hal is now a major in the British Army, and has been dispatched here to ferret out terrorists, those who are seeking to unite with Greece. The guerrillas fight with any means - rocks, bombs, ambushes, random shootings, piano wire stretched across roads in the hope of lopping off British heads.

Early in his tenure Hal is joined by his wife, Clara, and their young twin daughters, Meg and Lottie. Initially Clara is brave, cheerful, eager to make the best of things while they're in Cyprus. As for Hal, remember how we first met him - he is a moral man, an honorable man, believing that he is serving the greater good. However, the almost daily attacks begin to take their toll on him, and he is appalled, haunted by unexpected violence on the part of his men, raping, torturing.

His state of mind, of course, affects Clara who is alone a great deal of the time with their girls in a strange, dangerous place. Their once solid marriage becomes frayed; Clara and Hal driven almost to desperation, each fighting their own private battles.

Sadie Jones has crafted a remarkable story, richly detailed, reminding us of how deeply lives are affected by war.

Highly recommended.

- Gail Cooke

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