Under an English Heaven Book

The Second World War has England struggling for its survival, but in Suffolk, in the summer 1943, the setting of Robert Radcliffe's Under an English Heaven, beautiful weather and bumper harvests almost distract the locals from the build-up to one of the most crucial battles of the war. At dawn, the hosts of bomber bases constructed among East Anglia's quiet hamlets dispatch American airmen for daring daylight assaults against Germany's industrial war engine. At the village of Bedenham, a dusk watch records those few lucky enough to return--and the many who do not. The villagers live in fear and apprehension, but for one inhabitant, things are splendid. 14-year-old Billy Street is a canny London evacuee, and he is happy to take advantage of the opportunities sent to him, thriving in the acceptance he is now receiving. Billy's teacher Heather Garrett is waiting in anguish for news of the husband who has been missing for nearly two years, while US pilot Lt John Hopper is struggling with the trauma that is destroying him: he is trying to come to terms with the death of his entire crew and his own shameful survival. His friendship with Heather brings hostility from the village, and salvation for both seems a distant hope. Under an English Heaven is a book of immense psychological insight and understated emotion. Written in expressive, trenchant prose, Radcliffe's affecting novel draws us deeper and deeper into the lives of its damaged characters, until we come to care for their predicament as if it were our own. While the picture of a sleepy English village torn apart by the horrors of war is rendered with texture and precision, it's the relationship between the pilot John and the teacher Heather that galvanises our interest, along with the streetwise schoolboy Billy. There are echoes of the novels of William Trevor here (and that's to be welcomed), but Radcliffe's achieve is a personal (and singular) one.--Barry ForshawRead More