The Night Raid
Clare Harvey’s book is set in Malvern during the 2nd World War and features the real-life artist Dame Laura Knight.
17th Nov 2017, with her novel “Night Raid”.
Review of ‘The Night Raid’ Clare Harvey
Some readers will enjoy this tale, a rollicking run through the set
pieces of war reporting with which we have become familiar – the
food shortages, the rigours of public transport: trains still have that
faded glamour that wartime images instilled – the hell of air raids, the
casual sexual congress together with its aftermath. There is a romance,
nicely paced, with a sad ending, authentically tragic.
Some readers will enjoy the narrative tapestry, sometimes so closely
woven that the stitches of the story are hard to pick out. The prose is
purple; skies are mother-of-pearl, bays are curling crescents,
hawthorns are wind-gnarled, sweeping waves are sequinned, coves are
a translucent sweep, light is liquid; there’s more, those are within a few
lines on one page. Some may think that the thread of an illegitimate
child of Harold fairly preposterous and too near to artist’s
licentiousness; some may think that the fate of the Ruby Loftus
painting is far-fetched. What balances these flights of fancy is the
author’s treatment of the working class, authentic and revealing of
their hardships, made harder by war-time conditions, attitudes to
babies born ‘out-of-wedlock’ and the rigours of war-work in
factories. No glamour of a smart uniform here.
For myself, I found the Mills and Boon treatment hard to follow,
sometimes feeling like the snake captured by the stare of Rikki-Tikki,
unable to look away.
The surprise was the portrait of Laura Knight. Little of what she said
or did in this book was, as far as we can know, out of character. Her
outspokenness, the bubbles of resentment at Harold’s negative attitude
to her work schedule, driven, in part, by the inbred anxiety of lack of
cash, her sensual approach to female flesh, her toughness and
determination to succeed. Of all the characters in this book, Laura is
the most rounded and though it hardly compensates for plodding
through the novel, allows a different approach to a woman of,
sometimes incorrigible, plurality.
Gwyn Klee