A Good War
Patrick Bishop
A Good War
Adam Tomacevski is a Polish airman, flying Hurricanes alongside British pilots as the Battle of Britain rages in the summer skies over Kent and Sussex. Always something of an outsider back on the ground, Adam finds himself drawn to a maverick Irish soldier called Gerry Cunningham. 'You're out of luck, chum,' are the first words Gerry says when they meet in the crush of men competing for the few women at a dance in a seaside hotel, but when Gerry abandons his lover Moira, Adam's fortunes seem to have changed. For the next four years, Adam's life and Gerry's are intertwined like good luck and bad, love and loss, life and death, their paths crossing at various points on Adam's perilous journey from the ruins of Poland to the rolling English countryside, from Egypt to Occupied France.
4.0 out of 5 based on 3 reviews
|
Omniscore:
|
| Classification |
Fiction |
| Genre |
General Fiction |
| Format |
Hardback |
| Pages |
400 |
| RRP |
£12.99 |
| Date of Publication |
May 2008 |
| ISBN |
978-0340951705 |
| Publisher |
Hodder & Stoughton |
| |
Adam Tomacevski is a Polish airman, flying Hurricanes alongside British pilots as the Battle of Britain rages in the summer skies over Kent and Sussex. Always something of an outsider back on the ground, Adam finds himself drawn to a maverick Irish soldier called Gerry Cunningham. 'You're out of luck, chum,' are the first words Gerry says when they meet in the crush of men competing for the few women at a dance in a seaside hotel, but when Gerry abandons his lover Moira, Adam's fortunes seem to have changed. For the next four years, Adam's life and Gerry's are intertwined like good luck and bad, love and loss, life and death, their paths crossing at various points on Adam's perilous journey from the ruins of Poland to the rolling English countryside, from Egypt to Occupied France.
Reviews
The Spectator
Leo McKinstry
“Bishop has put his understanding of the period to good use in this tale, conjuring up the atmosphere and linguistic idioms of wartime. Inevitably, given the author’s previous work, there are powerful descriptions of the air battles and life on a RAF station, though he is equally good at capturing the mood in a rural pub, or a smoky, sweaty ballroom packed with uniformed personnel, where ‘the women stood out from the drab groups of men like flowers in a cornfield’.... an enthralling tale, and I hope not the last of Bishop’s wartime novels.”
28/05/2008
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The Daily Telegraph
Roger Perkins
“Bishop... picks apart the knotty little phrase 'a good war' in masterly fashion... each character seems intent on using the war for enrichment, self-discovery and self-promotion. He eloquently captures the intense feeling of being alive in a present where no future exists... Bishop's eye for detail is impressive... The old saying goes that a hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer. Bishop's gift in this book is to unlock the inner life of the hero after those five minutes.”
13/07/2008
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The Daily Telegraph
Toby Clements
“Bishop is a fine popular historian with a real feel for the period, but fiction is the trickier craft and apart from a few nice touches, sometimes this reads like a steady accretion of detail on a very simple plot.”
31/05/2008
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