Blasted Things by Lesley Glaister
Genre: Literary fiction
Read: 9th October 2020
Published: 7th May 2020
★ 1.5 stars
DESCRIPTION:
1920: Britain is trying to forget the Great War. As a nurse at the front, Clementine has found and lost love, but has settled for middle class marriage. Vincent had half his face blown off, and wants more than life offers now. Drawn together by their shared experiences at the Front, they have a compulsive relationship, magnetic and parasitic, played out with blackmail and ending in disaster for one of them.
Powerfully drawn together they enter a deadly relationship that careers towards a dark and haunting resolution.
MY REVIEW:
I've not read Lesley Glaister before and I was drawn to BLASTED THINGS for it's premise which promised something a little different to what I was actually expecting. As a historical fiction fan, I had expected a lovely easy read set during and after the Great War. A love story? Or something of a saga, maybe? But that's not what BLASTED THINGS is about.
In fact, what is IS about, beyond Clementine and Vincent and their dangerous liaison, is an exploration into the damage left behind after the war. Clementine and Vincent are products of such an horrific time, yet each suffer differently.
Clementine was a VAD nurse in France during the war where she worked alongside fellow nurses Iris and Gwen, under the watchful eye of Sister Fitch. After the death of her brother Ralph, Clementine trained for the Voluntary Aid Detachment as a nurse and, against her pompous fiance's wishes, went to France to serve in a field hospital. There she met Canadian surgeon Powell Bonneville and fell in love. He asked her to marry him, returning also to Canada with him when the time came. But just as he was about to leave and the field hospital was packing up to move five miles further out of harms way, a shell landed in their midst...killing Powell instantly as well as her dear friend Iris. Only she, Gwen and Sister Fitch survived, with Clem secretly miscarrying whilst recuperating.
She returned home to Blighty to marry her fiance Dennis Everett, a doctor no less, but a pompous, condescending, patronising fool. She bore him a son they named Edgar...though I doubt Clem had much say in the naming as she was too busy reliving and mourning the loss of Powell and their baby all over again. Being a doctor, Dennis knew how to treat her and she spent the next few weeks or so in a haze of injections and medications and, I fear, her marital duties.
On a visit to her widowed sister-in-law Harri and after a show of Dennis patronising her, Clem managed to escape for some fresh air and a walk. While on this walk, she stepped out into the road as a motorbike came around the corner and swerved to miss her...and ultimately crashing. Filled with a sense of guilt, Clem feels she must visit the poor chap in hospital but Dennis cannot see the logic. However she is is insistent and he acquiesces...though protesting loudly and often.
And so Clem meets Vincent Fortune, ex-sergeant, but the war left him changed. He is now so physically damaged that he wears a prosthetic mask covering one side of his face and an unseeing glass eye. Dennis thinks this is the end of it but he couldn't be more wrong. Clem insists on paying for the damage to Vincent's prized possession - his Norton motorcycle - which Vincent milks for all it's worth.
The two continue to meet clandestinely, looking for something in the other that neither can provide, leading them something far more dangerous. And while Vincent may seem like something of a "villain", the reality is his unravelling through no fault of his own. The war left many people changed and damaged...and Vincent was but one of its living casualties.
BLASTED THINGS was nothing like I expected it to be so therefore I was disappointed. I didn't want an exploration into the damage of war or those of the limited choices of a woman caught in a loveless marriage. I wanted a light easy read that I so love about historical fiction. This was too heavy for me and not to my taste at all.
The writing, whilst powerful, was at times rather uncomfortable. In the end, I could not finish this book so I have no idea how it all panned out. But from what I did read, it couldn't have ended well.
While it may not have been to my taste, BLASTED THINGS will certainly appeal to many others, I'm sure. I just don't think I was the right kind of audience.
I would like to thank #LesleyGlaister, #NetGalley and #SandstonePress for an ARC of #BlastedThings in exchange for an honest review.
MEET THE AUTHOR:
Lesley Glaister (born 4 Oct 1956, Wellingborough, Northamptonshire) is a British novelist, poet and playwright. She has written 14 novels, 'Blasted Things' being the most recent, one play and numerous short stories and radio plays. She is a lecturer in creative writing at the University of St Andrews, and is a regular contributor of book reviews to the Spectator and The Times.
Lesley's subject matter is often serious (murder, madness and obsession crop up regularly in her books) but with a thread of dark humour running through it. Her first novel 'Honour Thy Father' (1990) won the Somerset Maugham Award and a Betty Trask Award, 'Now You See Me' was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for fiction in 2002, and 'Easy Peasy' was shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Award 1998. Her first play, 'Bird Calls' was performed at the Crucible Theatre, Sheffield, in 2003.
Lesley is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She is currently writer in residence at the University of Edinburgh. She is married to poet Andrew Greig.
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