Siren in the Night

This detective novel, published in 1943, is set during the Second World War. The plot connects two major events in modern American history: the great fire of San Francisco in 1906, when more than 80 per cent of the city was destroyed, and the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941 (the siren in the title refers to the blackout siren connected with air raids). Two murders take place in the respectable neighbourhood of San Joaquin Terrace. There are formal detectives investigating the crimes, Colonel Primrose and Sergeant Buck, but also Grace Latham, the narrator, who happens to observe aspects of both crimes and pieces together who might have been involved in the murder and why.
 

The author, Zenith Jones (née Brown, born 8 December 1898), wrote under the pseudonyms of Brenda Conrad, Leslie Ford and David Frome. Born in California, where her father was an Anglican missionary to Native Americans, she grew up in the state of Washington. She studied at the University of Washington in Seattle and following her marriage to an academic, she taught English there from 1921 to 1923. Between the publication of Murder of an Old Man in 1929 and Trial by Ambush in 1962, she wrote more than 60 detective novels. Whereas her novels as Leslie Ford were mostly set in large American cities, her novels as David Frome were set in London.

The family at the centre of the plot is that of Loring Kimball. His wife had disappeared during the 1906 fire and her husband had kept a light on in one of the rooms of his house since then, ostensibly to honour her memory. This approach to mourning resembles the respect shown for young men (sons or husbands) who went to war and never came home. The author touches on the impact of the First World War on American society. Of the two detectives investigating the murder case, Colonel Primrose “was wounded in the Argonne” (the American offensive of September-November 1918) and “his iron henchman Sergeant Buck... also 92nd Engineers”.

Curious George

This children's story, published in 1941, has become an international classic. Appearing during the Second World War, it explores relevant themes for children during wartime, namely curiosity and danger. The central character, George, is captured in his native jungle by a zoologist as a result of his characteristic curiosity and taken to America. There his curiosity again leads him into dangerous situations. There isn't a moralistic side to the story — he's not deliberately mischievous but his curiosity is still putting him and others at risk.

The co-author Hans Rey (né Reyersbach, born 16 September 1898) was brought up in Hamburg, where he lived close to the zoo and spent a lot of time there observing the animals. He joined the army as an 18 year old and served in France and Russia. After the war he studied at the universities of München and Hamburg. His first illustrations were published in 1923. In 1925, due to the economic depression he emigrated to Brazil. He later met there a family friend from Hamburg and he married Margret in 1935 and relocated to France later that year. While living in Paris, his animal drawings for several children's books came to the attention of a French publisher, who commissioned him to write a children's book and it was published in 1939. The couple, both Jews, had completed the manuscript for the next book (this one) when they were forced to flee into exile in June 1940 by the impending Nazi invasion. Settling in New York, the couple agreed a four-book deal with a Boston publisher in February 1941 and Curious George appeared later that year. It's generally accepted that the storyline was largely Margret's work with Hans adding the illustrations. They produced a further six books about the same character as well as several other story books for children. Hans also wrote an illustrated guide to astronomy.

George, the monkey featured in the story, ends up in prison. When the guard enters his cell, he manages to escape and goes up onto the roof.
“And then he was lucky to be a monkey:
out he walked onto the telephone wires.
Quickly and quietly over the guard's head,
George walked away.
He was free!”

This passage no doubt brought to mind for the authors how they had themselves escaped Paris by bicycle to Orleans from where they took a train to the Spanish border and freedom.

The Levantines

This historical novel, published in 1961, is set in the Italian community of northern Egypt in the interwar period and during the Second World War. I read it during Women in Translation Month. The central character, Daniela, has been raised as an orphan by her grandmother. As such, her character is a microcosm of the Levantine experience — not knowing whether they belong to Europe or to North Africa; not belonging to either the Arab community or the colonising British community; ostracised during the war; and disappearing without trace in its aftermath.

The author, Fausta Cialente (born 29 November 1898), the daughter of an Italian army officer, was a native of Sardinia but spent much of her childhood moving from place to place. When she married in 1921, she and her composer husband went to live in Alexandria, the main city of Egypt's Mediterranean coast. She completed her first novel, Natalia, in 1927 but it was not published until 1930 after she had made an impressive literary debut with the long story (it's a new term for me — apparently it falls somewhere between short story and novella), Marianna, in 1929. The novel Natalia explored the narrator’s memories of childhood and early adulthood; were it available in English I would have it read it as it includes the death of her father in the First World War and her correspondence with a young soldier on the front. Her second novel, wholly set in Egypt, was published in 1936. Involved in anti-fascist and resistance activities, her literary career was put on hold. She returned to Italy in 1947 but it was not until 1961 that this, her next novel, was published. She went on to write four more novels as well as a collection of short stories. Her final novel, Le quattro ragazze Wieselberger (The Four Wieselberger Girls) won the Premio Strega (Italy's most prestigious literary prize) in 1976.

Daniela, the orphan protagonist, seeks to understand her own background in conversation with her guardian grandmother:
“My grandmother was talking loudly, as she nearly always did. She was getting angry with Livia, which was not at all unusual, either, saying scornfully that Livia had made her miserable bit of money during the Great War, helping smugglers on the beach, which was then completely deserted, but no one had managed to find out how on earth she had landed up in Egypt, and with whom.”
There are other snippets about the First World War as the memories of different characters are explored.
Soàd, her grandmother's servant, tells Daniela what she wants to know about her early childhood:
“that immediately after the 'accident' my grandmother sent someone to fetch me in Italy. The Great War was on at the time and we made the journey in a convoy, guarded from attack, threatened by German submarines.”

The Great Crusade

This epic novel, published in 1940, is an intense account of the campaigns of the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War. The action described is based on the owner’s own service with the International Brigades. As Ernest Hemingway explains in his foreword to this novel, which “deals with the days when the Eleventh and Twelfth Brigades fought in defence of Madrid”, “no one has more right to write of these actions which saved Madrid than Gustav Regler. He fought in all of them.”

The author, Gustav Regler (born 25 May 1898), grew up in Saarland near the German border with France. On finishing school, he enlisted for war service in November 1916. He was sent to the Western Front and fought at Chemin des Dames near Soissons. He was invalided  with severe gas poisoning in autumn 1917 and was also treated in a mental hospital. After the war, he studied in the universities of Heidelberg and München. While working in journalism, his first novel was published in 1928. A member of the Communist Party from 1929, he fled his homeland in 1933 after the Reichstag fire. In 1936 he went to Spain to serve as a commissar of the Twelfth International Brigade, which consisted of battalions of Belgian, French, German, Italian, Polish and Spanish volunteers. He was badly wounded in June 1937 near Huesca in northern Aragón . He was imprisoned in southern France on the outbreak of the Second World War but his Brigade colleague, Ernest Hemingway, successfully led a campaign for his release and he emigrated to Mexico. He wrote several more novels in exile as well as poetry and an autobiography. He was awarded the Art Prize of Saarland in 1960.

Many of the volunteers in the International Brigades had fought as young men in the First World War. One of the main characters in this novel is referred was a commissar called Albert. His war service on the Western Front takes place at the same location as the author’s:
“As a boy of 17 he had fought through the World War against France. On the heights of the Chemin des Dames he had kille the fathers of these volunteers with whom he now stood before Madrid. After the war he became a pacifist. In 1932, at that Soissons, which in 1917 he had helped to destroy, in Soissons the resurrected, he spoke on peace. A French war invalid with a wooden leg showed him about the city, which still smelled of paint and fresh plaster. They had walked arm in arm, a happy symbol of their two republics, which more and more must come to know each other. That was their hope”

Antimacassar City

This historical novel, published in 1940, is a somewhat Dickensian depiction of an Ayrshire family as they establish themselves in Glasgow society. Set in the 1870s, the central character is Phoebe Moorhouse, the only daughter of the second marriage of her father. When they are killed in a pony-and-trap accident, the ten-year-old orphan moves to Glasgow to become part of her half-brother Arthur's family. During the course of the novel, Arthur, a provisions merchant, works his way up from living near the toughest parts of the city and they join the exodus to the prosperous western suburbs. The novel formed part of the Wax Fruit trilogy. The trilogy in turn was followed by two sequels.

The author, Guy Mc Crone (born 13 September 1898), grew up in Glasgow. In January 1917, prior to taking up a place in university, he volunteered  to serve with the Young Men’s Christian Association on the Western Front. In an interview he explained this: "being ineligible for the army, I went to scrub floors and sell cigarettes in soldiers’ Y.M.C.A. [centres] in Normandy and Paris”. He went on to study economics at Cambridge. After university he worked as a printer in Glasgow and was a major proponent of opera there. He began writing in 1931 and his first novel appeared in 1937. A further seven novels were published. He defended the fact that he wrote mostly about Glasgow society:
“People have asked me why I continue to write almost exclusively about my own kind of people...Here is my reason. I had not gone far with the study of the novel before I saw that a novelist, especially if he has a recording talent and not a talent for fantasy, writes best about the place that has been his home; that is, the home of his childhood and adolescence”.

Phoebe Moorhouse, the central character, has a particularly traumatic experience early on in her life in Glasgow. This produces a peculiar change of mindset — she seems to lose all feeling for other people:
“She regarded him with her usual impersonal interest. He must be racked with anxiety. Did people express so little when they were faced with ruin? Did they merely sit quietly and look before them? Was she really hard, that she could not feel more for this stranger? Was there something left out of her make-up? Had she a limited supply of sympathy?”
This change of mindset is typically of what is now termed post-traumatic stress disorder, known in the First World War as shell shock or neurasthenia.

Between the Devil

This novel, published in 1939, is set in a small town in Virginia with an economy centred on a mill. The central character, Edward Burton, a young Methodist minister, whose wife is expecting their first child, becomes embroiled in the conflict between a fledgling trade union movement and the union-busting vigilantes. Having both powerful and powerless in his congregation, he tries, with the best of intentions, to serve each side with tragic results both for him and for the vulnerable people he seeks to help.

The author, Murrell Edmunds (born 23 March 1898), grew up in Virginia. While studying at the University of Virginia, he joined the army for service during the latter months of the war. On returning to university, he studied law. in 1926 he abandoned the legal profession to devote his time to writing. He sought to show in his writing the possibility of change through “the gradual relaxation of old patterns and tensions and a forthright new articulation of the brotherhood of man”. His first novel was published in 1927. During a long career he wrote eight more novels as well as short stories, plays and poetry. Aware that his social and political views were too progressive for Virginian society in general, he spent much of his career in New Orleans where his views were either tolerated or shared by those in his social circle.

Edward Burton, the young minister at the centre of this novel, is not unduly troubled when encountering death in his pastoral work:
“Edward laid his Bible on the side of the bed and sat down. Anne's pale face was barely recognisable on the white pillow, the outlines of her wasted body hardly discernible under the covers. He looked at her closely. He was accustomed to death; it neither shocked nor awed him. Death was sure. Death was certain. Life it was that bewildered and betrayed.”

The Fugitive

This psychological novel, published in 1938, details the experience of a killer on the run through rural Vermont.  The central character is an orphan farmhand. His employer, James Stark, makes an agreement with him to give him $600 at the end of three years but tries during those years to get the farmhand to leave and thus avoid having to pay. Nearing the end of the contract, at the age of 18, things come to a head and he kills Stark. He flees to the hills and is pursued by the local farmers.

The author, Richard Warren Hatch (born 18 April 1898), grew up in Massachusetts. His first novel was published in 1929 and, like this novel, featured a young farmhand. Writing under the pseudonym of Clare Meredith, most of his subsequent novels were set in rural Vermont and were psychological in their focus. He also wrote several works of fiction for children.

The author describes the psychological endurance that enables the fugitive to persevere in spite of physical weakness:
“Swinging along, fear-driven so that he had the preternatural strength of the sick, the lost and the demented, there gradually awoke in him the sense of his own prowess. He was aware that he went on beyond the limits of his own strength, that he did the impossible. He was aware that his endurance was too great for him. It was an overwhelming thought.”
In the same way soldiers were mentally driven on to overcome weakness of fatigue and injury.