'Everyone Brave is Forgiven' by Chris Cleave

Everyone Brave is Forgiven by Chris Cleave (author of Little Bee) is starkly beautiful and heartbreaking, filled with astute observation, keen insights, and touches of humor. It is the story of four young London friends at the start of World War II. Three remain in London during the Blitz and one serves on Malta. I found it gripping and moving, and it made me wonder how people recover from war, witnessing so much cruelty and destruction and suffering so much pain and deprivation, but Cleave based his novel on his grandparents’ courtship. For an excellent fuller review, which I cannot better, see the one written by Jeanette Zwart for Shelf Awareness: http://www.shelf-awareness.com/issue.html?issue=2738#m32172