Unexploded by Alison Macleod – A book review

A melancholic song is playing in the background. It seeps into the aural sense. It affects but surprisingly I don’t want it to end. And it doesn’t; it goes on.

What is war? A conflict carried on by force of arms between nations or between parties within a nation. Force there is, arms there are – fire from the skies, fear there is, and war there is. And then there are other conflicts, within; there are wars in the head, in relationships; a sense of betrayal, there is hatred dripping, there is a tacit shelling of unspoken words, of feelings.

‘There is no invasion as fearful as love, no havoc like desire. Its fuse trembles in the human heart and runs through to the core of the world. What are our defences to it?’

It’s World War II, Germany is planning to invade Britain. George Beaumont is a bank manager but the war has voluntarily turned him into Superintendent of the infirmary. Evelyn is his wife, happy with him and their son Phillip. The war has bought a tremble in her life like everyone else’s. George’s decision to take up an assignment away from them, for the country, has imbibed a sense of betrayal in her that she can’t free herself of.

A feeling of abandonment engulfs her; George hasn’t left yet but the thought of him being able to leave them; her and her son, is killing her, is straining their normalcy. And the green pills of death lying there below the spade in their garden, kept by him, is an evidence of his torture; a death before dying. 

When relationships have been lived long and though the strands are strong, there is an inevitable abrasion due to circumstances. That is when the transparency turns to translucency, a slightly opaque layer shrouds and suddenly it becomes unimportant to reveal things. You ask and answer for yourself, ‘what difference will it make?’ – the first signs of a strain.

‘She had to look away. Sometimes, it was still an effort: to hate him so she would not love him. He’d always been such a good father.’

Otto Gottlieb, a prisoner of war, a Jew, an artist, finds himself in Geoffrey’s infirmary. But he’d been disowned even before he reached the infirmary, by the Germans. He’s an outcast; do we not know why.

Evelyn has decided to read at the infirmary to the prisoners; there are only two; the dying Italian and Otto. What starts as an indifference towards the confined Jew, unknowingly develops into love - time, situation, betrayal and most importantly, an imposed loneliness in the head play their roles. Can one infidelity justify another?

‘Life would hobble on. Indeed, perhaps it was only by accepting the inevitable failures of intimacy that one’s married life moved forward and passed into the muted successes upon which anniversary parties, retirement dinners and obituaries ultimately depended.’

According to the biblical narrative, Bathsheba, wife of Uriah, was summoned by King David, who had seen her bathing and lusted after her. David had Uriah himself carry the message to be placed on the front lines of the battle that led to his death.

This disturbing piece of Bathsheba’s story has an apparent influence on ‘Unexploded’s’ central theme, both literally and otherwise. As the story unfolds, the writer unveils the characters to the yearning reader as they wince and gasp in anticipation. 

‘Yes’, he (Otto) told the young critic, ‘I think that is fair to say. One is always, also, painting oneself. It’s inevitable, though one’s focus is necessarily trained upon the subject. I suppose all of life, whether off the canvas or on it, is made from’ – he’d allowed himself to smile carelessly for the first time that opening night – ‘the intercourse of two things.’

Through Ms. Macleod’s chisel arises another grotesque effigy of hatred which represents the thoughts of children in war; their perspective. A nation is probably already dead when its children fall prey to hatred, when their minds are polluted, when their innocence is no more the innocence of harmless sport but becomes a criminalized innocence; the innocence remains but is veneered in pure hatred. 

What is more disturbing - the everyday anticipation of war or the war itself? Which is more tiring?

‘She wanted life, she wanted it badly. She needed the world to burst open. To go up in smoke. She wanted the enemy to invade the shore and be done with it. Fear was exhausting, but nothing tired a body like hope.’

‘Then, as if in reply to some reckless act of the collective will or an unspeakable communal wish, something in the atmosphere gave way that July night. Squalls and showers blew in from the west. The lid of summer came off. And in a moment that was, after so many months of waiting, as much longed for (secretly, ashamedly) as it was dreaded, the first bomb was tipped into the early morning of the new day: a fifty-kilogram falling star, gravid, lethal and indifferent.'

When you see a plane firing bullets in the distance, a character says in one of the paragraphs, never run away from it; run towards it if you want a chance to survive. And run towards disaster is what every character in this story does but does anyone survive?

It’s a well crafted, intelligently written story; I loved the simplicity of the narrative. It struck a chord and it’ll stay with me for a long time. The melancholic tune still resonates as Evelyn visits Otto’s representation of Bathsheba in his painting on the church dome. 

And as a tear finally falls, I am there to witness it.

My rating - 8/10

Picture courtesy:

Alison Macleod - https://www.penguin.co.nz/authors/alison-macleod

‘Unexploded’ book cover - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18212386-unexploded