A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

This novel is regarded as one of the greatest American novels of the twentieth century and was very widely read when it was published in 1943 (it sold 300,000 copies in just six weeks).

The author, Betty Smith (born 15 December 1896), grew up in poverty in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and based the novel on her own adolescent experience. Her central character, Francie, spends much of her childhood accompanied more by books than by friends. In response to her mother Katie's question, “What must I do, Mother, what must I do to make a different world for her?", the grandmother advised Francie's mother, Katie, that she should read to her family every evening from the Bible and from the complete works of Shakespeare:
“The secret lies in the reading and the writing. You are able to read. Every day you should read one page from some good book to your child. Every day this must be until the child learns to read. Then she must read every day.”

The concluding chapters show Francie gaining independence through the education that she has received. The young men on the streets of New York are preparing to go to Europe to fight in the war. A soldier admirer on a date with Francie speaks of his fear:
“I may not come back from over there and I'm afraid... afraid. I might die... die.”
Months later, she thinks of him:
“He was with the Rainbow Division — the Division even now pushing into the Argonne Woods. Was he even now lying dead in France under a plain white cross?”

Second Wind

This is an excellent insight into the German experience of the First World War and its aftermath, including the author’s difficult escape from Austria after the Anschluss. Carl Zuckmayer (born 27 December 1896) served in the field artillery on the Western Front. In the 1920s after several years of disappointment he became a successful dramatist.

Written in 1940, this autobiography was published in English in 1941. It was an important book of the period, giving readers a personal view into the background to the Second World War.

Zuckmayer went straight from school into the army on the outbreak of the First World War. In that respect he was typical of his class of boys aged 17 or 18:
“Only five of the 21 in our class did not volunteer on the first day of the war; three of them belonged to a Catholic seminary for priests and... had to join the Red Cross... two were physically unfit. These five envied us and wept for chagrin and despair. Of the 16 who went into the war nine fell in battle. Two died from the effects of the war. One, while still at the front, committed suicide. Four lived on. I am one of the four.”

Zuckmayer recalled the youthful enthusiasm for war which he shared with so many of his compatriots as well as his counterparts:
“Like young lovers who do not know the reality of love, its lust for power, its cruelty and magnificence... so were we who rushed into war under the impression that it was an intoxicating and noble adventure. We were wild, exalted, uninhibited, full of appetite and awkwardness. And again, like lovers, we were full of ourselves, hypnotised by conceit.”
He wrote candidly about dealing with fear on the Western Front when recounting a particularly tense battle:
“During that night I may have killed some of the Senegalese. I did not mean to do anything bad. I was afraid. Yet I had been at the front for two years by then. I knew that courage was nothing more than controlled, repressed fear. If you did not know fear, you are not brave but just stupid. And we, at the front, knew that you cannot rid yourself of fear; it always comes back like sweat or digestion and you simply evolve a technique of dealing with it, which means that in spite of terror you continue to function with precision and keep your head. In return for that, your superior technique in handling your fear, you receive medals and laudatory mention in dispatches.”

In the midst of the terror of war, Zuckmayer’s dignity and kindness shone through:
“Once, during the spring offensive in March 1918, I came across a dead Englishman whose lettercase had fallen out of his pocket. I opened it and found a little coloured card with a printed message to which were added two lines in a child's handwriting:
                          CHRISTMAS GREETINGS
         Kindest thoughts and best wishes for a Happy Christmas
                                          To: Bob
                          From: His Sister Dolly, with Love
I looked long into the face of this young 'enemy' and I can still remember it today. I could imagine, from his features, what his little sister Dolly looked like. I mourned for this Bob. I thought to myself, ‘Why is he lying there and not I?’ Those are dangerous thoughts. When you begin that you cannot stand war much longer.”

The Secret of the Empire

Heimito von Doderer (born 5 September 1896) served in the Austro-Hungarian army from April 1915 and shaped this novel around his experiences as a prisoner-of-war in Siberia during the Russian Civil War Though published in German in 1930, the novel only appeared in English translation in 1998.  In his afterword, the translator, John S. Barrett, refers to an earlier book in this project:
“Like the Englishman, Edmund Blunden, who wrote in his introduction to Undertones of War (see my blog), ‘I must go over the ground again,’ Doderer returned — in his mind at least — to go over the ground on which he had stood some 50 years before, to Siberia. At the very end, in a losing race against death in 1966, he was reworking the themes of The Secret of the Empire, reshaping the events and people encountered into a novel in his mature style, titled Der Grenzwald (The Border Forest).”

In another part of the afterword, Barrett brings to mind the biography of Eric Lomax (The Railway Man). Lomax was a railway enthusiast who as a prisoner-of-war in Burma in the Second World War was tortured in the construction of a railway. Barrett ponders:
“Some of the author’s earliest memories were of the rail lines, the viaducts and the puffing trains near the home rented by his father while he was designing and overseeing the construction of the commuter lines into Vienna. What must it have meant later, to the young Austrian soldier, to be carried off to the most memorable time and place of his life, into Siberia, by the same creatures of steel?”

Doderer detailed the plight of the thousands of prisoners:
“In the gigantic camps... where the captured enlisted men live stacked on top of one another in bunks without bedding or covers... the Russian state is squeezing every bit of work out of those man that can possibly be squeezed out. The rapidly expanding camp cemetery receives the worn-out material.”

For the survivors at the end of the ordeal there was, however, compassion:
“To those wandering homeward, the peasants along the way still offered, a thousand times over, a hospitable roof, a friendly word, and shared their bread and their milk pails with them, and asked whether their mothers were still alive back home, whether perhaps there were wives or sweethearts or maybe even children... who were awaiting their return...
And then there were those last, memorable conversations about the sin of taking part in wars and the salvation from it through our Lord, Jesus Christ. In that way the peasants imparted to those wanderers... that most necessary advice, offered in such a touching way even to many a godless one.”

Verdict of Twelve

This novel, published in 1940, is a multifaceted crime mystery that focuses on the trial of a woman for the murder of the orphaned great-nephew who had been entrusted to her care. The author, Raymond Postgate (born 6 November 1896), was an Oxford-educated academic. On graduation in 1917, he sought exemption from military service on the grounds of pacifism and socialism. His case was dismissed. He was offered a non-combatant role in the army but he refused it. He was then forcibly conscripted before being discharged as medically unfit.

Postgate’s pacifism and socialism are visible in several elements of this novel. In particular, he includes in his accounts of the background of the members of the jury either tragic outcomes of the war or a well-defined class consciousness. These background accounts in their variety and eccentricity resemble the approach of Georges Perec’s Life: a user's manual. Victoria Atkins, for example, had moved to London to work in a munitions factory and by the end of the war had saved some £200. Her little niece was orphaned by the war:
"Irene Olga Hutchins, sole reminder of the two younger male Atkinses... 'two' because there was a regrettable doubt which of them was the father, and both were beyond reach of questioners in a Flanders cemetery."
Another juror reflects:
"Adrian, Frederick, Lionel, Alistair... where were they... They were all golden or dark boys, whom he had loved passionately, and who had elegantly supported his uncouth and obvious affection... Where were they now? Adrian, Maurice, Alistair, Lionel... some of them were dead. Handsome and young an dead..."
"There has been, after all, one who had not been indifferent to his shambling tutor. He had been allowed to call him Dion... His Dion had enlisted in 1915 in the R.F.C. and had come back within a week broken. He lived three days in hospital, unconscious: he was buried in the cemetery of the Wiltshire village where he was born."

As for the young boy, Philip, and his great-aunt at the centre of the trial, the author tells of that family's loss in the war:
"Philip's grandfather, Sir Henry Arkwright,... had had three sons to inherit his considerable fortune. All three had served in the army during the 1914 war. Michael, the eldest, had been killed with thousands of others at Passchendaele. Arnold, the professional soldier, had been the only one to come through unscathed. He had served in the East and after the war had gone with his young wife to take up a responsible post in East Africa. Robert, the youngest, was called up in February 1918. Before he went out, he married Rosalie Brentt [the woman later charged with murder]... It was a war marriage... Robert never had time either to repent or to feel his [father's] wrath. He was posted as missing in July 1918: he was never heard of again."

The Promised Hand

This Gujarati novel was a surprising delight. I kept thinking of Shakespeare (there are definitely shades of Othello and Romeo and Juliet). The author, Jhaverchand Meghani (born 28 August 1896), originally wrote this novel in weekly instalments in a newspaper (à la Dickens). It was then published as a book in 1938. Interestingly, the author explains in a foreword that the gradual serialisation allowed readers to influence the development of the plot:
“The letters started arriving soon after the first instalment appeared and continued to come as  the story progressed. From near and far, from villages and cities, the college-educated and commoners, men and women alike, wrote to me and suggested the direction the story should follow.”

As the title suggests, the story focuses on a traditional betrothal. The families of Sukhlal and Sushila had agreed when they were still young children that they would get married. In the intervening period, however, Sushila’s father brings his family from rural Gujarat to bustling Mumbai. As her father becomes more and more successful in commerce, he develops a prejudice against the ordinary village families that used to be his neighbours back in Gujarat. He shows more and more determination to bring an end to the betrothal and find a more prosperous husband for his daughter. Sushila, however, has other ideas. As with Charles Plisnier’s Nothing to Chance, the author describes female characters as being confident and free from male domination or constraint (though the traditions and customs remain strong). No matter how ruthless or menacing her father is, Sushila, aided by other women, is resolute. Unlike Juliet, she succeeds in overcoming all the obstacles placed in the way of her marrying Sukhlal.

An interesting historical anecdote is that one of Sukhlal’s cousins intimidates Sushila’s father into retreat but sarcastically proffers an apology:
“Please forgive me, Sheth! I have also joined Mahatma Gandhi’s non-violent group, sort of. It’s only my hands that have remained outside.”


Alongside the central plot, there is a constant theme of loss. From the start, Sukhlal’s mother is confined to bed with a serious illness and the shock of hearing of a threat to her son’s betrothal is fatal blow. Sushila quickly takes over motherly care of Sukhlal’s young siblings even though the wedding is still in doubt. Another character, Leena, had nursed Sukhlal in hospital with a strong sense of remembrance of a loved one who had died young. The novel’s conclusion has Leena making a poignant gesture towards the young couple as she prepares herself for the possibility of her own death as part of a relief team responding to a severe epidemic.