This book is the second in Louis de Bernieres’ Daniel Pitt trilogy. I have just re-read it in preparation for reading the third instalment, The Autumn of the Ace. It is, as usual with anything by Louis de Bernieres, a deeply sensitive and quite beautiful story. Daniel Pitt has come back from the First World War during which he became a legendary flying ace. He is married to Rosie and living in Ceylon where he has a tea plantation. He is happy in Ceylon but Rosie isn’t and they return to England in 1928 at Rosie’s insistence.
Although I have read a lot of Louis de Bernieres’ books I haven’t read Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, mainly because I loved the movie so much but I have heard lots of people say they didn’t like it at all because it made a hash of the book. I don’t want to stop loving the movie, of which we have a DVD and which we watch every now and then to our great enjoyment. The point of all this is that on the ship from Ceylon back to old Blighty Daniel strikes up a friendship with the ship’s young Greek doctor, Iannis, who is giving up his job with the shipping line and going back to the island of Cephalonia to look after his wife who is dying from tuberculosis, and to raise his daughter, Pelagia. When I finish The Autumn of the Ace I might just have to get over it and read Captain Corelli to see if there is a further relationship between Iannis and Daniel. It might even come up in the Autumn of the Ace which is going to have Daniel joining up again for the Second World War.
Back to So Much Life Left Over: these characters are so real that I am excited about following their paths straight away with the next book. They all came back to me as I was re-reading it, as did the first story in the trilogy, The Dust That Falls From Dreams. Daniel experiences love, rejection, happiness, sadness, redemption and through it all remains a decent, heroic man. Louis de Bernieres is a master story teller and his female characters are as sensitively drawn and equally appealing as his males.
I would recommend this book to anyone who loves character-driven, evocative, intensely moving writing.
“If you have been embroiled in a war in which you confidently expected to die, what were you supposed to do with so much life left over?”
5 out of a meaningful 5.
Published by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
