A review by gh7
Friends and Heroes by Olivia Manning

3.0

Like the other two books, I found this (mildly) entertaining but if you consider this trilogy runs to over a thousand pages you do find yourself realising that Olivia Manning, though a good writer, doesn't have an awful lot to say about life. She lucks out to some extent in that she finds herself living through a moment of history that has few chroniclers. But there's also the strong suspicion she's seeing it all through a distorted lens. Manning clearly takes all her material directly from life without much of a filter. Little attention is paid to architectural artistry. She throws in everything she experienced as if one thing is as relevant as another. She also repeats herself a lot. A habit ex-pats who have a tendency to repeat the same daily cycles over and over resort to. Essentially these books are about living in an ex-pat community as much, if not more, than they are about the second world war. Having had some experience of the ex-pat community in Florence I sense as communities they haven't changed much through the years. The members tend to stick tightly together as a means of keeping everything foreign at bay. They rarely learn the language. Which means the language they have is staunchly self-protective and neurotic. And this is the world Olivia Manning's cast of characters form. Poor Harriet, Manning's heroine, has far more to fear from the benumbing mediocrity of her company than the Nazis. No wonder she's always moaning. First and foremost, her manchild husband who, like perhaps like every other character in this book is running away from reality rather than fascism. I realised at the end of this trilogy that it's doubtful if a single one of Manning's English characters would even be capable of producing a child. Such a band of hapless misfits might provide a high dosage of whimsical humour but I'm not sure they provide much reality. The Rumanians first and then the Greeks are little more than local colour in Manning's books. Forget empires, the English, as represented here, would struggle to organise a jumble sale. You almost begin to sympathise with the Germans (certainly a new and disturbing experience, though clearly unintended). Perhaps it would be better if this old world of unearned and condescending entitlement ceased to exist. Which is why this is one of the most eccentric literary depictions of WW2, as if it was some kind of social experiment which all Manning's characters dismally fail.