Book 26: The Lie

The Lie

Helen Dunmore

It is no surprise, perhaps, that the First World War's centenary has occasioned the release of a glut of novels and other books examining what is, in the United States at least, a largely forgotten war. Yet as Helen Dunmore shows in The Lie, the war has always been balanced precariously between the realms of memory and willful forgetfulness. This is a thoughtful, deliberate book that wanders from plot point to plot point, caring not so much about what happens as it does about how the few things that do happen affect the war-addled narrator, a British veteran who neither peacefully lives with nor seems particularly keen to discard the memories that continually haunt him. It's as though Daniel Branwell is still caught out in no man's land as he attempts to settle back into life in his native Cornwall; the sights, sounds, and the smells of the war continue to swirl around him as he drifts in and out of consciousness and connectedness with his actual surroundings. The book constantly shifts between past and present, usually without prelude or warning, but the changes are slow and subtle, provoking only a gentle disorientation that softly places readers into Daniel's shoes. The resulting sense of general aimlessness suits the book in the end, I think, although it can make for rough going at the beginning, which provides little indication that the story will build toward anything at all. Yet the story does build, as Daniel slowly comes to confront more and more elements of his past both before and within the context of the war, and it picks up pace nicely as it rolls toward a conclusion that seems sadly inevitable, though cathartic for reader and narrator alike.

This isn't a book about what happens so much as it is a book about what has happened, a subtle difference born out of a modern understanding of the effects of shell-shock. Despite this somewhat modern sensibility, however, the book usually feels appropriate to the immediate postwar period and, more importantly, to its rural setting, which provides ample room for contemplation. Dunmore's poetic prose blurs the lines between Daniel's alternate realities, her words bobbing in and out of both worlds as Daniel does, enhanced (but not pretentiously) by well-chosen quotations from the likes of Arnold, Byron, and Coleridge. Daniel's reluctance to make his presence known is echoed by the book's slow burn, as is his (very) slow reintroduction to some of the people he previously half-knew and the reader's gradual appreciation of the past that weighs so heavily on Daniel. Dunmore is (mercifully) confident enough in her abilities to allow the book's nuances to flow and to speak for themselves, allowing for an organic glimpse into the minds of those who went away and those who survived, both in the trenches and at home. The residents of Daniel's hometown seem themselves torn between deep- yet intensely private- depression and a kind of unemotional avoidance that can only be intentional.

The book may seem unassuming, focusing as it does on one man's experiences in a sparsely populated corner of England, but as it explores the ability of trauma to forever alter the mind, it takes on a larger scope. It is not only Daniel Branwell's story that we are reading; it is the story of any number of the millions whose lives were shattered so thoroughly by a phenomenon so deeply beyond the realm of comprehension that willful ignorance almost seems a justifiably sane way to attempt to deal with it. What results is a deeply poignant book about love and loss without any of the bombastic overtures that often undermine similar attempts to come to grips with the effects of war. The book stays rooted to its small-scale story and, in doing so, somehow comes to represent the whole. Daniel's relationship with his best friend Frederick, which drives the book, is at once unique and universal, as is Daniel's desire to do justice to Frederick long after the decisive moment has passed. So, too, is his subsequent attempt to find solace in the company of Frederick's sister, Felicia, who suffers herself from the knock-on effects of love and loss. But there is no peace to be found, it seems, in a world so profoundly changed from the one they knew before

The book might thus be unsatisfying to some, meandering along as it does without offering any solace of its own, but it feels so real and so true, hinging on the small regrets and white lies that can slowly, but easily, come to overpower an individual human spirit. It is unclear which of its many untruths comprises the book's titular lie, but perhaps this refers, instead, to the falsehood whose effects permeate every page of the novel, the unspoken promise that Daniel and the world alongside him could somehow return to a life where the trenches seemed impossible, the realities of the war too horrific to contemplate. Instead, they returned with the scent of French mud lingering in their nostrils, with ghosts whose presence is at once welcome and disconcerting, with futile hope born out of desperation. In the end the lies- all of them- catch up with Daniel, and there is but one way forward. The Lie is an elegantly crafted, if occasionally slow-moving, glimpse into the effects of war, a subtle exploration of love, loss, and the world the Great War left in its wake.

Grade: A