Best wartime reads focus on areas other than battles

As a child, I recall my brother and father watching WWII movies, “The Big Red One” being one of their favorites. They liked to jokingly call it “The Big RED One,” instead of the “Big Red ONE.” I couldn’t have been less interested.

The war movies of my childhood were primarily about men. If there were any women characters at all, they were merely “skirts” or “broads” to chase. The films were violent and, frankly, simplistic. There was an emphasis on the physical conflict between armies, and none of the characters or events were nuanced in any way. There were “good guys” (the Allies) and “bad guys” (the Axis powers). No thank you.

But something changed. For me, it started with “Das Boot” in 1981. This film depicts sailors aboard a German U-boat patrolling the Atlantic in 1941. Although the characters are “the enemy,” they are portrayed as human, complex, and sympathetic. The film shows not only tense scenes of battle, but also the mundane and tedious lulls between battles.

Most good movies are based on excellent books. This is true of most popular WWII movies. Fortunately, many of the titles from the last decade that are set during the war feature aspects of the war other than battles and some with female protagonists.

One highly acclaimed title is Erik Larson’s “The Splendid and the Vile,” which focuses on Churchill’s first year as Prime Minister and the effects the war has on his family as well as the British people. The book opens on Churchill’s first day as Prime Minister and recounts the devastating year that follows.

As with all of Larson’s immensely readable works, “The Splendid and the Vile” recreates both public and private scenes based on meticulous research and interviews. This particular book details not only Churchill’s incredible leadership, but also the importance and influence of the women around him, specifically his wife, Clemmy, and his daughter Mary.

Larson’s “In the Garden of the Beasts” recounts the rise of the Third Reich and the build-up to the war from inside Berlin. The book focuses on the first US ambassador to Nazi Germany and his party- and uniform-loving daughter.

One of my favorite wartime stories is “The Woman Who Smashed Codes” by Jason Fagone. Elizebeth Friedman, the mother of modern cryptography and cryptoanalysis, first became indispensable to the government when she went to work breaking codes used by smugglers during Prohibition. When the war broke out, she went to work decoding enemy messages, including those produced by the “unbreakable” Nazi code machine, Enigma—using just pencil and paper.

Friedman’s work was forgotten for decades because J. Edgar Hoover claimed her accomplishments for his own agents, and Friedman herself often allowed her work to be attributed to her cryptologist husband, William.

“The Girls of Atomic City” by Denise Kiernan focuses not on just one person, but on many of the women who helped create a community in a secret government facility set on a muddy clearing in a Tennessee forest. They had dangerous and dirty jobs, and although they weren’t told what exactly they were working on, many of them figured it out themselves. They were helping to create the uranium that would go into the world’s first nuclear weapons.

My most recent wartime read is “A Covert Affair” by Jennet Conant. The cover features Julia and Paul Child and suggests that the book is about their time in the OSS—the precursor to the CIA—and the FBI investigation of Paul. However, the book is primarily about Jane Foster, a socialite heiress and artist from California.

The book is a fascinating account of Foster’s bohemian life and her wartime work for the OSS. She was in the propaganda division. She made friends with Julia and Paul while they were all stationed in Ceylon and later in China. She also lived in Paris at the same time as the Childs and socialized with them.

It was because of this long friendship that Paul came under suspicion as Jane had been accused of spying by another American spy. The book does go into detail about how Paul responded to the investigation and fought to have his name cleared, eventually succeeding.

Although the book is not really what is advertised either on the cover or on Amazon, it is still an interesting read. It gives a detailed look at the work of the OSS during the war and a cogent explanation of how Europe’s insistence on returning to colonial dominance of Asia after the war led to the expansion of communism in the region and the conflicts that followed.

John Wayne and “The Big Red One” notwithstanding, I am now a fan of books and movies about WWII.

Ishiguro defies genre labels

Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro is one of my newest favorite authors not only because his prose is perfect, his characters complex and sympathetic, his plots compelling, and his themes thought-provoking, but also because he defies genre distinctions. I was first introduced to Ishiguro in 1993 with the film version of ‘Remains of the Day.’ I didn’t feel moved to read the book because the story was so sad.

A few months ago my book club selected ‘Klara and the Sun,’ Ishiguro’s latest novel. I think it may be his best so far.

Klara is an AF (artificial friend) waiting to be chosen when 14-year-old Josie sees her in a store window. Klara waits expectantly for Josie to return and take her home. When she does, Klara believes that things will be wonderful for the two of them. However, Josie has bouts of a mysterious illness that keep her bedridden for weeks at a time. Klara concludes that if she asks in just the right way, the Sun will use his special nourishment to cure Josie and save her life.

The themes of this novel have to do with love and mortality, but the secondary issues--pollution, consumerism, gene editing, economic displacement, and distrust of others--left me hoping for sequels in the coming years.

‘Klara’ was labeled Young Adult, but like any good YA book, it is just as appealing to adult readers. Some might label ‘Klara’ as science fiction since it is set in some undetermined future and includes not-yet-invented technology.

Since I loved ‘Klara’ so much, I then read some of Ishiguro’s earlier works, including ‘Never Let Me Go,’ which also might be labeled sci-fi. And it, too, has been adapted to the screen, although I’ve not seen the movie.

The story opens when Kathy is ending her unusually long career as a carer after attending her childhood friends, Tommy and Ruth, through "completion." She recalls their childhoods in Hailsham, and later at the Cottages. Their "guardians" at Hailsham teach them that they are special, but outsiders shun them, even seem afraid of them.

Although Kathy and her friends are doomed to a pretty grim fate, they do nothing to escape it. They are not imprisoned and can simply run away, but they don’t. They accept their fate with dignity and compassion. Ishiguro’s insightful portrayal of people resigned to a hopeless future demonstrate his keen understanding of human nature and human failings.

Like ‘Remains of the Day,’ ‘When We Were Orphans’ is ostensibly “mainstream literary fiction.” Famous London detective Christopher Banks recalls his childhood in Shanghai and the disappearances of his parents when he was nine years old. He spends 20 years researching his most pressing case and finally returns to Shanghai to solve the mystery and rescue his parents.

The narrator's voice is objective, sometimes detached, as you would expect from a detective. However, the mystery of his parents is secondary. This novel is really an examination of the fallibility of memory and how people delude themselves.

‘The Buried Giant,’ which might be labeled fantasy, is the strangest and perhaps the darkest of Ishiguro’s novels.

Iron-age Britons Axl and Beatrice leave their village to visit their grown son in another village, a three-day walk from them. On the way they encounter ogres, pixies, King Arthur’s knight Sir Gawain, and other strange and mysterious creatures and people. They lament that they cannot really remember their son because of a “dense mist which hung over the marshes” that clouds everyone’s mind so that they cannot recall things that happened even a few days or hours ago.

This strange and entrancing story offers interesting characters, plot twists, and an exploration of importance and purpose of memory and of forgetting. The dark and ambiguous ending will make readers reevaluate the strength of their relationships.

Moreover, Ishiguro has two other novels that might be called historical, ‘A Pale View of Hills,’ and ‘An Artist of the Floating World.’

But what is the difference between genre fiction and literary fiction? Can’t any genre novel (say, horror, romance, sci-fi) be elevated to literary fiction? Ishiguro’s works illustrate that it’s a matter of quality not subject or setting as demonstrated by the author’s ease at using the tropes and trappings of genre to create literary masterpieces.