So Much Life Left Over

Lous de Bernières

Penguin Random House

Otago Daily Times, September 22nd 2018

Although it can easily be read as a stand-alone story in its own right, So Much Life Left Over is the second in a planned trilogy following the fortunes of a group of upper-middle class British families through the 20th Century and explores themes of love, loss, family, religion and the search for meaning.

The first novel in the series, The Dust that Falls from Dreams, covered the years between 1906 and the immediate aftermath of WWI and its sequel follows the surviving characters through the interwar decades and into WWII as they try to come to terms with the direction their lives have taken.

The meaning of the title is made explicit early in the story by its main characters, ex-fighter pilot Daniel Pitt, who tells us that “Those who survived had so much life left over that it was sometimes hard to cope with. Some became drunks; others fell quiet and imprisoned themselves inside themselves; some foresaw a brave new world and strode out towards it; others returned to what they had been before”.

At the heart of the story is Daniel’s slowly crumbling marriage, which mirrors in miniature the fate of the European peace.  The story opens in Ceylon, where he and his wife Rosie are eagerly awaiting the arrival of their second child. But Rosie has never fully recovered from losing her first love in the war and this grief is reignited when the baby arrives stillborn. Despite a subsequent, successful pregnancy, she begins to withdraw emotionally and physically from her husband and refuses to allow him time with their new son.

Her attempts to estrange him intensify when they return home and in a series of increasingly cruel acts, she manages to completely exclude Daniel from their lives. Over the years he finds other sources on consolation and purpose, including secretly fathering two children for Rosie’s lesbian sister and her partner, but the outbreak of WWII sees him return full circle, contemplating the paths not travelled and trying once more to find purpose through action.

As with its predecessor the story is told through multiple artfully contrasted characters, each with their own, individual chapters. Most of are presented from limited, third person perspective, interspersed by letters and the occasional, first-person address. These voices provide a variety of perspectives. but border on caricature, and the reader is clearly invited to compare and contrast between them.

The plot also incorporates a variety of historical touchstones: The couple’s time in Ceylon speaks to the colonial mindset and the decline of the British Empire. Daniel’s passion for motorbikes brings him into contact with Lawrence of Arabia (“He was deeply envious, not of Lawrence’s heroic past, but of his stainless-steel petrol tank“). And the time he spends in Germany on the eve of war not only allows us to see the deteriorating situation there but also enables him to rescue a Jewish family when he leaves. 

Although engaging, moving and frequently humorous, So Much Life Left Over​ is a little too hard to be clever to really sing.