The Love-charm of Bombs

[Dave Monroe]

http://www.thomaspynchon.com/gravitys-rainbow/extra/love.html

The Love-charm of Bombs
Restless Lives in the Second World War
By: Lara Feigel


'The nightly routine of sirens, barrage, the probing raider, the
unmistakable engine ... the bomb-bursts moving nearer and then moving
away, hold one like a love-charm' --Graham Greene

When the first bombs fell on London in August 1940, the city was
transformed overnight into a strange kind of battlefield. For most
Londoners, the sirens, guns, planes, and bombs brought sleepless
nights, fear and loss. But for a group of writers, the war became an
incomparably vivid source of inspiration, the blazing streets scenes
of exhilaration in which fear could transmute into love. In this
powerful chronicle of literary life under the Blitz, Lara Feigel
vividly conjures the lives of five prominent writers: Elizabeth Bowen,
Graham Greene, Rose Macaulay, Hilde Spiel and the novelist Henry
Green. Starting with a sparklingly detailed recreation of a single
night of September 1940, the narrative traces the tempestuous
experiences of these five figures through five years in London and
Ireland, followed by postwar Vienna and Berlin.

Volunteering to drive ambulances, patrol the streets and fight fires,
the protagonists all exhibited a unified spirit of a nation under
siege, but as individuals their emotions were more volatile. As the
sky whistled and the ground shook, nerves were tested, loyalties
examined and torrid affairs undertaken. Literary historian and
journalist Feigel brilliantly and beautifully interweaves the letters,
diaries, journalism and fiction of her writers with official records
to chart the history of a burning world, experienced through the eyes
of extraordinary individuals.

http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/the-love-charm-of-bombs-9781408830444/

http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/the-love-charm-of-bombs-9781608199846/