Brian Grafton
Victoria
BC Canada
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Posts: 4717
Joined: 2004
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Len Deighton’s Bomber
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Found this review of Deighton’s classic, Bomber, on the WaPo site this a.m.
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Though this might be a tad overdone, anyone who hasn’t read Bomber but professes an interest in WW2 could do much worse than read this book. My late father-in-law, who flew two complete tours (60 official ops) as an air gunner/master gunner introduced me to it in the mid 1970s, saying simply that it was the most accurate description of what an op was like that he’d ever read.
I have read this novel a number of times, and have yet to be bored with it. Deighton is more than just a craftsman; he consciously invokes the darkness of the ritual that makes war acceptable to so many. He has researched both the German and the British sides of the war at a specific time (June 31, 1943), and has captured a cataclysm.
Gladwell is clearly writing this to hype the new edition of the novel, now being re-issued some 53 years after the original. That being the case, I like his inclusion of Vera Brittain’s comment about the British lack of imagination. Is WaPo ‘taking the piss’ by using the photo of a Halifax in a review of a novel about a squadron of Lancasters, or is it just a lack of imagination?
Cheers
bg
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"We have met the enemy, and he is us." Walt Kelly.
"The Best Things in Life Aren't Things" Bumper sticker.
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