Everyone Brave is Forgiven

Fiction. Literature. Historical Fiction. HTML:The instant New York Times bestseller from Chris Cleave�??the unforgettable novel about three lives entangled during World War II, told "with dazzling prose, sharp English wit, and compassion...a powerful portrait of war's effects on those who fight and those left behind" (People, Book of the Week). London, 1939. The day war is declared, Mary North leaves finishing school unfinished, goes straight to the War Office, and signs up. Tom Shaw decides to ignore the war�??until he learns his roommate Alistair Heath has unexpectedly enlisted. Then the conflict can no longer be avoided. Young, bright, and brave, Mary is certain she'd be a marvelous spy. When she is�??bewilderingly�??made a teacher, she finds herself defying prejudice to protect the children her country would rather forget. Tom, meanwhile, finds that he will do anything for Mary. And when Mary and Alistair meet, it is love, as well as war, that will test them in ways they could not have imagined, entangling three lives in violence and passion, friendship, and deception, inexorably shaping their hopes and dreams. The three are drawn into a tragic love triangle and�??as war escalates and bombs begin falling�??further into a grim world of survival and desperation. Set in London during the years of 1939�??1942, when citizens had slim hope of survival, much less victory; and on the strategic island of Malta, which was daily devastated by the Axis barrage, Everyone Brave is Forgiven features little-known history and a perfect wartime love story inspired by the real-life love letters between Chris Cleave's grandparents. This dazzling novel dares us to understand that, against the great theater of world events, it is the intimate losses, the small battles, the daily human triumphs… (more)

Subjects

Socialites England London Fiction

Triangles (interpersonal relations) Fiction

World War, 1939-1945 England London Fiction

Language

English

Original publication date

2016-04

Other editions

Everyone Brave is Forgiven by Chris Cleave (Hardcover)

Media reviews

The Vancouver Sun

Everyone Brave is Forgiven is a story of the Second World War in all of its nastiness and depravity. Cleave is now working on a sequel, with the same characters, that will take place during the first three years of peace after the war. Cleave is a powerful writer, leaving readers with vivid and

uncompromising images and stories. In Little Bee, Incendiary and Gold, he told the truth, unflinchingly. Everyone Brave is Forgiven is the same, and readers won’t soon forget it.

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The Guardian (UK)

Throughout the novel, Cleave portrays the visceral experiences of war with skill and empathy, whether it’s Alistair’s repeated near annihilation in Malta or the catastrophic effects of the blitz. There are moments of genuine terror – particularly during Mary and Hilda’s ordeals as ambulance

drivers attending to London’s bombed-out victims – in which Cleave reveals his talent for pacing and tension. His engagement with themes of racism, class, female empowerment and the emotional dislocations induced by war lend the novel social and historical depth in scenes that are both intricately researched and evocatively conveyed...With Everyone Brave Is Forgiven Cleave cements his reputation as a skilful storyteller, and a sensitive chronicler of the interplay between the political and the personal.

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The Independent (UK)

Chris Cleave’s powerful and moving fourth novel, Everyone Brave is Forgiven, is a period piece that sits alongside the likes of Pat Barker’s Noonday, Andrea Levy’s Small Island and Sarah Waters’ The Night Watch....If I’ve made it sound at all unexpectedly lighthearted, then I’ve done

some justice to Cleave’s tone. Despite their increasingly straitened and entangled circumstances – and he doesn’t shy away from gory descriptions of death and destruction either – Cleave’s characters hold their upper lips stiff with a brace of humour.

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The Washington Post

“Everyone Brave Is Forgiven” is a narrative of redemption. All the same, it leaves the novel with significant problems because it flattens out the conflicts, rendering them more as device or backdrop than transformative experience....This is the difficulty with looking back at such a

paradigm-shifting event as World War II: 50 million dead, a continent destroyed, and the anxiety of all those years spent in the shadow of devastation, of not knowing what each day might bring. “Everyone Brave Is Forgiven” pays lip service to such issues, but it can’t, or doesn’t want to, deal with the complexities; there is no room for them in the story Cleave aspires to tell.

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