Book review: Blow on a Dead Man's Embers by Mari Strachan

Published on Monday 25 July 2011 13:31

Mari Strachan's second novel evokes an era and a people now passing almost beyond living memory. It casts light into the aftermath of the Great War with its loss and waste, delving compassionately - and in a nuanced way - in

Mari Strachan's second novel evokes an era and a people now passing almost beyond living memory. It casts light into the aftermath of the Great War with its loss and waste, delving compassionately - and in a nuanced way - into the price paid by those thought lucky: the soldiers returning from bloody battle, the so-called survivors.

The time is mid-summer, 1921, the setting north Wales. Veteran infantryman Davey Davies, in the early morning, crouches, cowed, under the table in his small kitchen, shouldering an imaginary rifle, "his eyes are wide open, as if mad with fear'" His wife Rhiannon (known as Non) observes him covertly, alarmed yet helpless. "The War has taken her husband away as surely as if it had killed him, and returned a stranger to her in his place." The gulf between these central characters is the space in which Mari Strachan creates the heartbeat of her novel.

That space is both actual and psychological. Above all, it is emotional. Non and Davey are no longer intimate. Strachan's delving is unsentimental and undramatic. It's a convincing tale of life in a Welsh-speaking village, bringing into being a broad cast of characters: eccentrics, gossips, in-laws, neighbours - placing Non and Davey at its irreducible heart.

Non longs to reach Davey's mind, to find the cause of his fear and wretchedness, to restore their pre-war contentment, back when they had lived with Davey's children from his first marriage - Meg and Wil, and the adopted, mysterious Osian - a period when their happiness was reduced by Non's inability to have children because of a heart condition from birth.

From her dead father she had acquired the skills of a herbalist, and concocts her own medication. Her curative powers are famous throughout the village and beyond. Her carping mother-in-law describes her as a witch; to a former suitor she is "an enchantress"; Davey, in happier times, had said she "put a spell" on him.

Non is a charismatic woman, from strong-minded, educated stock. Gwydion, her nephew, a zealous nationalist, comes to stay with them for the summer. Branwen, her sister - Gwydion's mother - rules her own family with a rod of iron.

All these characters are solid, well-drawn presences. Even the dead loom large - Davey's older brother, Billy, a sexual gadfly who died in combat; Rhiannon's father, who shaped her childhood with boasts of his prowess; Davey's dead wife; and the tragic Ben Ellis, Davey's comrade who died in France, his body missing, his mother distraught.Some of these dead are seminal to the mysteries of the book, for above all else, from the wellspring of character, rises the stories and shapes of their lives, their stumbling progression, their fatal full stops.

Strachan's finest gift - one which she shares with the late Catherine Cookson, who also made colour out of the black and white of history - is a talent for telling stories with grace and compassion.

Almost everyone, even the least of Strachan's walk-ons, pursues a storyline unique to themselves - yet they cross the arcs of others, creating flashpoints, repercussions. The book has momentum from first to last.

Gwydion seeks out Non's help, as does Wil, who harbours a passion for going to sea. Then Non herself discovers a letter from Angela, a nurse Davey met at the front. Non decides to seek out Angela in London, to try to shed light on Davey's confession of infidelity with Angela and perhaps discover the reason for his terrible flashback traumas.

Thus, Non's own deception is conceived. She tells Davey lies to cover her absence. Her meeting with Angela (who looks like Davey's dead wife), clears up the matter of Davey's unfaithfulness, but it also saves Rhiannon's life, which she had not realised was in danger.

The tale is full of such sudden twists. The thorny question of the adopted Osian's parentage (and his uncanny resemblance to Davey) is likewise fathomed, and the cause of Davey's horrors is finally spoken.

Yet out of its truth comes another death. A bloody, violent one. The book's ending is far from gentle, its resolutions neat but troubling. The shadow of war is not easily wiped. Which may make Blow on a Dead Man's Embers sound baleful and fraught. Yet love is its driving force. Its denouement portends contentment. And Mari Strachan makes it feel true.

• Mari Strachan is at the Edinburgh International Book Festival on 26 August.