2020/100: The Dust that Falls from Dreams -- Louis de Bernieres

He is so high above the devastation that he is beyond the distress of it. [p. 156]

The Dust that Falls from Dreams opens in 1902, at a garden party in Eltham, celebrating the coronation of Edward VII. The hosts are the McCosh family: Mr McCosh is a businessman and inventory, his wife is a staunch Royalist who writes regularly to Buckingham Palace, and they have four daughters -- Rosie, Christabel, Ottilie and Sophie. The neighbours on one side are American, and Ash, the eldest of the three sons, has an understanding with Rosie: the neighbours on the other side are half-French, and the two sons of that household, Daniel and Archie, put on a show for the entertainment of the guests.  

And then the novel fast-forwards to the war years, and the devastation -- emotional, physical and practical -- experienced by the McCoshes and their friends and neighbours. Some of the war scenes are utterly devastating: some are incongruously lovely. Daniel finds peace and vocation as an airman: Ash, in the Royal Artillery Company, is less fortunate. Mrs McCosh goes to Folkestone with a friend and witnesses the aftermath of a bombing raid. Rosie becomes a nurse; Christabel mingles with Bohemians ... And because the barriers of class come crashing down during and after the war, the middle-class (upper middle-class?) characters find their interactions with servants and the working class greatly altered. (When Millie, the maid, becomes engaged to be married, Rosie embraces her, despite Millie knowing that 'it could not possibly be done'.) There are several points during the novel where issues of class are foregrounded, and there's often an undercurrent of friction between servants and employers. I was sometimes unsure whether an observation was a character's or the author's -- for instance, when Rosie is described as being sorry for the rag-and-bone man's horse: "It had not occurred to her that the rag-and-bone man himself was equally in need, and that he and his horse were starving together." (p. 130)  

At the heart of the novel are Rosie and Daniel, each mourning in their own way, each suffering loss and despair. Daniel's story reminded me of Kingdom of Silence, though more in specific elements than in overall theme. The novel is sometimes, and unashamedly, sentimental: at other times, especially but not exclusively in the war scenes, there's a clean precise brutality to the prose that brings a sense of terrible immediacy. 

There are many disparate strands to this novel, and not all of them are neatly tied off. Madame Valentine, the medium, seems to be the genuine article: but who is the young man who wants to be heard? Ottilie doesn't feature as much as her sisters: is she really only pining after a man who's in love with someone else? Christabel and her friend Gaskell deserve a novel of their own. 

I finished the novel feeling that it had ended very abruptly, with many plot points unresolved: but there is resolution (or at least resignation) for at least some of the protagonists.

And there seems to be a sequel: So Much Life Left Over... I'm not sure it will provide sufficient closure, because that's not how life works and de Bernieres is wholly successful at conveying the chaotic flow of the human condition: but it's on my to-read list, because I found this novel such an engaging and affecting read.