Unexploded

by Alison Macleod

This book was one of the books on the Mann Booker list for 2013.  I tried to read the Luminaries by Catton, which won the prize but hated it and couldn't finish it -- 800 pages, way to many characters...Never can figure out the judges in these awards.

Anyway, after that rant I will get back to this book.  It is set in Brighton during the second world war.  Brighton is on high alert as it is so close to Europe and likely to be the site for a German invasion.  A young married woman, with a young son, is upset by all the tension in the war.  However, she is more upset and despondent when her husband says he may have to leave her for a time to escort some money to London.  He has also buried a box in their garden with some money and, cyanide pills.  He doesn't tell her about the pills.  She discoveers then when she digs up the box   She feels devastated by her husband's potential abandonment of her and her son.

She starts to visit a local camp where Germans and Jews are being held, on the outskirts of town.  She starts reading to an old man who is very ill.  There is another man in the infirmary, a painter, possibly a counterfitter.

As the woman draws away from her husband he has a performance issue once when they try to have sex.  He decides to test his mettle by going to a prostitute. But his experiment turns into an affair.  His wife evenutally finds out but he assures her he is done with the lover.

The old prisoner dies, the woman then goes to read to the other prisoner but he is soon removed from the infirmary.  The woman urges her husband to get him employment and he arranges for the man to paint a mural in a local church.  She finds him living in the cold church and gives him a key to a neighbour's house that is not occupied so that he will have a  warmer place to stay, 

Her son stumbles on the man and befriends him until he sees the man comforting his mother.   He and his friends had found the "pills" and leave them with candy in the man's house.  The women enjoys the work of  Virginia Woolf  and is devastated when she learns that Woolf has committed suicide.  She seeks comfort with the painter rather than her husband.  Her husband stumbles upon them when he is looking for her.

The husband wants their relationship to be repaired, he even seems to think he can accept her love for the painter as long as she loves him too.

The woman had urged her husband to get the man more employment so he is hired by the military to help clear bombs.  The man is clearing bombs on his first day of work, he also has the candy/pills in his pocket
All we learn is that a bomb went off and the man was buried by rubble from the cliff.  Did he take a pill and did that affect him, or was it a tragic misjudgement with an armament.  The book ends with the woman feeling alone, having lost the painter but it appears she is pregnant.

I found this story very engaging.  The author did a great job of portaying what life would likely be like during the war, how people were acting/reacting to all the tension --- frightened, perhaps reckless.

The boys play war games, they include one of the boy's war damaged brothers.   Some of their actions upset him but they don't seem to realize they are likely bringing painful memories back to him.  I think she has likely captured the bravado, passion and insensitivity of youth.

I thought it was a great novel, a very compelling story, well written, thought  provoking.... All the things Luminaries was NOT.