The Clouds Above: A Novel of Love and War

Rating:
Summary: How Lucky We Are
Review: While a book by a published poet, as Greig is, framed by a wartime diary might seem an unlikely reason to reaccess your life and what is owed to those who went before "The Clouds Above" will upset your expectations wonderfully. Written as both a love story and a tale of the horrors of war for those too young to understand or avoid it is ultimately a comment on the immediacy and beauty of existence. Four friends, two pilots and their girlfriends during the 1940 Battle of Britain , relationships formed by the happenstance of war dare to love while learning that those attachments might at any momment be destroyed by an enemy fighter or a bomb plunging through a dancehouse roof. And similarly, abetted by Grieg's felicity with the written word, the reader comes , against rising dread, to care greatly for characters who might just survive to realize their dreams. The book brings vividly to life the human cost of war during a time when we have allowed ourselves to be seduced by an image of high technology warfare that hurts no one but "evildoers." The real cost, Greig points out, is to those we love. The real damage, it becomes clear, is to one's heart.