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Darkness Falls from the Air
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May 2017- Darkness Falls from the Air by Nigel Balchin
I just received a used copy from Powells that is practically falling apart so I may be a slow reader on this.
I mainly voted for this one because I had already read all the other nominations and wanted to give it a try, and also because Susan and Nigey both liked it. The descriptions of wartime London and Londoners are good and almost certainly closer to the truth than the 'London can take it', everyone carrying on as normal propaganda. (People in the West End are carrying on much as normal, going out to dinner, to pubs and clubs, etc., but it seems more thoughtless or careless than brave. Characters go wandering about the streets during air raids or regret missing the 'show' because they were eating in a downstairs restaurant at the time. People living in or near the heavily bombed docklands areas are not carrying on as normal, they are stunned, although a nice cup of tea can be guaranteed to improve every situation from problems with a histrionic lover to homelessness and bereavement.)
A nice cup of tea can, in my opinion, solve almost any crisis, Val :)
Mod
No, there are many cliches about us Brits, but that is real - I say that as I sit here with my morning cuppa by the way :)
Here's some info I posted over at TPHAS on the dedicated Nigel Balchin thread...So who was Nigel Balchin? He is rated by both Cathi Unsworth & Paul Willetts, always a very positive sign.
According to this website...
http://www.nigelmarlinbalchin.co.uk
....Nigel Balchin trained originally as an industrial psychologist, in which capacity he helped Rowntree’s to successfully launch Black Magic chocolates in 1933, Nigel Balchin first received critical acclaim as a novelist during the Second World War when he wrote Darkness Falls from the Air. It was the first of three evocative novels (including the smash-hit The Small Back Room) that made good use of his wartime employment experiences at the Ministry of Food and later in the army. This trio was followed by a stream of other fine novels, such as A Sort Of Traitors, Sundry Creditors and The Fall Of The Sparrow. Balchin diversified into film scriptwriting after the war, winning a BAFTA for his work on The Man Who Never Was and penning what he whimsically described as “the first folio edition of Cleopatra”, being his original (unused) script for the Richard Burton/Elizabeth Taylor epic. When Balchin died in 1970, at the age of 61, the Guardian anointed him “the novelist of men at work”, a fitting epithet for one of the best fiction writers of the twentieth century.
There's a biography too...
His Own Executioner: The Life of Nigel Balchin by Derek Collett
‘First-rate biography’ – David Collard, The Literary Review
‘Collett paints a convincing picture’ – D.J. Taylor, The Times Literary Supplement
‘A riveting and revealing biography’ – Cathi Unsworth, ‘First Lady of noir writing’ and author of Without the Moon
‘Fascinating’ – Paul Willetts, author of Rendezvous at the Russian Tea Rooms
I read 'Darkness Falls from the Air', my second book by Nigel Balchin, in December 2016 and I really enjoyed it.... 'Darkness Falls from the Air' was first published in 1942 and is set in London during the Blitz. It’s well written and is particularly good at describing life during the Blitz. Less than 200 pages long, 'Darkness Falls from the Air’ is a downbeat and tragic tale, but it is also realistic and memorable. If you are interested in books set in and around World War 2 then this is essential….
Click here to read my review
4/5
If you have yet to discover the charms of the Backlisted Podcast, then my recommendation is you should put that right ASAPBut why do I mention Backlisted on this thread?
There' a truly great episode in which they discuss 'Darkness Falls from the Air' by Nigel Balchin.....
Journalist, broadcaster and former editrice of The Erotic Review Rowan Pelling joins John, Andy and Mathew on the show to explain her love of Nigel Balchin's novel of the London Blitz, Darkness Falls From The Air.
https://soundcloud.com/backlistedpod/...
or
http://podbay.fm/show/1063252175/e/14...
or iTunes
And, FYI, here's how the Backlisted Podcast was launched in Dec 2015, and which I love...
So we’ve started a podcast. It’s called Backlisted and the simple premise is that every fortnight we choose an old book we think everyone should read. Unbound are sponsoring it and it is hosted by me and Andy Miller, an old friend and former colleague from the early (glory) days of Waterstone’s now better known as the author of the wonderful memoir The Year of Reading Dangerously.
Each episode also features a special guest. The first three are Lissa Evans on J.L. Carr’s A Month in the Country, Linda Grant on Jean Rhys’s Good Morning, Midnight and Jonathan Coe on David Nobb’s It Had To Be You. There’s also a ‘tenuous link’ cameo by Unbound’s Mathew Clayton. We intend for it to be warm, enthusiastic and cheerful – rather like the atmosphere of Waterstone’s staffroom in 1992, only with better drinks and (marginally) less swearing.
Backlisted is not about promoting new books, either by ourselves, Unbound or anyone else. The decision to do it sprung out of two related observations: one, that people keep asking us what they should read; and two, that almost all the existing book podcasts are driven by what is new rather than what is good. If nothing else, if you do acquire the books we recommend you’ll have a pretty interesting bookshelf to dust and share pictures of on Instagram.
Franz Kafka once wrote that a book was ‘an axe to break the frozen sea within us’ which perhaps goes a little too far (a Haynes car manual comes in useful when you’re trying to install a new alternator) but we do think, in Andy’s words, that books ‘represent the best that human beings are capable of’. We also think that the act of reading a whole book – in a world too often dominated by snap judgements and borrowed one-liners – actually makes us wiser, more tolerant human beings.
http://blog.unbound.com/the-backliste...
Mod
Great news Ally - on both countsI would not call 'Darkness Falls from the Air' bleak, rather downbeat and ultimately tragic, but don't let that put you off. A book set in the Blitz is never going to be a feel-good read but there's so much period detail to enjoy and appreciate, and Nigel Balchin absolutely nails the bureaucracy of the Civil Service.
The descriptions of Marcia's affair are also fascinating, and evoke the live for the moment spirit that we've read about in Lara Feigel's 'The Love-charm of Bombs: Restless Lives in the Second World War', and the extra marital affair that seemed to abound during the Blitz for London's literary set.
Mod
I really loved this novel. I did try "Backlisted," but I hate to say that I wasn't very impressed, Nigeyb. Mind you, I didn't listen to that episode, so perhaps I should give it another try.I thought the best parts of this novel were actually set in the office; dealing with the endless bureaucracy...
Sorry to hear you didn't like Backlisted Susan. You should definitely give the Balchin episode a go. It helps to have read the book under discussion. I also really enjoyed the recent Patrick Hamilton ep.Ally, my observation about the Civil Service is based on no first hand knowledge at all, so I will be fascinated to discover how the depictions compare with your own experiences. What I can say is that both in this book, and in 'The Small Back Room', the depictions of the workplace ring very true and tally with my own working life particularly the office politics, the bureaucracy, the incompatible personalities, the sarcasm, the insecurities etc.
Mod
Another interesting conversation was about Balchin's success in his own lifetime but how quickly he fell into obscurity after his death. He took part in panel shows like 'Any Questions' so his views were shared widely and he was successful enough to have written a first draft of the Burton/Taylor Cleopatra film. Yet, he isn't very well known now.
I wonder what it is that makes a successful writer fall out of public consciousness? and which of our modern writers might share a similar fate? what is it that leads to longevity?
Ally wrote: "I wonder what it is that makes a successful writer fall out of public consciousness? and which of our modern writers might share a similar fate? what is it that leads to longevity? "Ah. I'm glad you asked Ally. The answer to those questions is contained in 'Invisible Ink: How 100 Great Authors Disappeared' which is a marvellous little book and a trove of inspiration. I heartily recommend it.
The book consists of 100 short, snappy pen pictures of all manner of forgotten writers (or forgotten books by well known writers) taken from a series of articles originally written by Christopher Fowler for The Independent newspaper.
Where the book's author Christopher Fowler really succeeds is in making each entry amusing, enticing, and intriguing, and, as a consequence, he made me want to read something by virtually all of them.
Each writer gets a couple of pages and they range from the very well known (e.g. Charles Dickens and Robert Louis Stevenson) to the unlikely (Arnold Ridley aka Godfrey in BBC TV 1970s sitcom Dad's Army - who fought in both World Wars and was also an author).
What the hundred authors all have in common is that at some stage in their literary careers they sold in sizeable quantities and yet subsequently some, or all, of their books are now all but forgotten, or at best just remembered by their hardcore fans.
So why do some books and authors fall out of favour whilst others go on to enjoy longevity? The answer, according to Christopher Fowler, is far more arbitrary than you might imagine: fashion, economics, luck, film adaptations, and many other variables might play a part. What is clear is that the majority of authors eventually disappear, including those whose books become touchstones for many of our lives.
In this world of e-publishing and niche publishers there is now far more likelihood of being able to source a digital or republished edition of a book that might otherwise be out of print.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Perhaps Nigeyb knows better than I, but I believe this novel was fairly auto biographical. During the war, I think the author also worked as a civil servant and that his wife was having an affair? If you have read his biography, which I would like to do, perhaps you can let us know if his marriage had a happier ending?What did everyone think of Stephen as a character, and of the way Bill seemed to accept him?
I believe it was autobiographical too, but have not read the biog I reference above. The whole thing reads very vividly and I am sure was based on personal experience.Stephen was infuriating - a manipulative attention seeker who perhaps also had genuine mental health issues. Bill's acceptance of the situation is extraordinary but was certainly something that seemed more common in the artistic milieu.
What's your view Susan and the rest of you?
Bill seemed to think that, if he told his wife to choose, she would choose him. He was an odd mix of the arrogant and the insecure. I was amazed at his wife so brazenly, and openly, having an affair. I know times were unique, but it reminded me a little of those pre-war BYT's weekends, where couples were all openly carrying on intrigues with the connivance of their hosts and everyone agrees to just ignore it.
What did anyone think about book written about the blitz, by someone who lived through it virtually as it happened? Did you feel it offered more than a novel set in this period by a contemporary author, for example.
I think it's a superb depiction of the Blitz Susan. Almost reportage. Incredibly atmospheric and brilliantly evokes the confusion, fear, bravery etc. It's the highpoint of an already very good novel.What did you make of it Susan?
What about other BYT readers?
I agree, Nigeyb. I thought it had an immediacy that you don't usually find that was, obviously, because he was there. I found it interesting as well, how annoyed they were about work being delayed and how staff (understandably!) used it as an excuse not to do anything. I think being bombed is a reasonable excuse to be honest. I wouldn't want to die while working!
Mod
Susan wrote: "I agree, Nigeyb. I thought it had an immediacy that you don't usually find that was, obviously, because he was there. I found it interesting as well, how annoyed they were about work being delayed ..."I agree as well, although I think the annoyance was because they were stopping work for every air raid warning, when the target of the bombing was the areas near the docks and bombs were rarely falling on their part of London.
Yes, true. I still think an air raid of any description would be enough to make me down tools though :)
I've only reached chapter 2. They sat out an air raid in an underground restaurant and debated walking home. Then just said screw it, if it has our name on it then it has our name on it. But they were tempted to go to the docks on fire, but what could they do really.
I read an interesting book by an academic - can't remember the title now, sorry. However, he said his family intended to tough it out in London until he asked his parents, as a very young child, whether he was dead yet and then they moved to the country. It gives you sobering thought for the people suffering bombing in war torn countries at the moment, that is for sure...
Mod
"But how much do you mind?"
"When I mind enough to matter I'll tell you," I said.
"But you do mind, all the same."
"Just enough to preserve your self respect," I said.
"Not more than that - honestly?"
I said, "I told you long enough ago about that. I love you and I think you love me. If it meant anything to you, I assume that you'd stop, and stop quick."
"Of course," said Marcia. "But not many people would see that"
"Pure conceit," I said. "If I were five feet two and spotty, or if I thought you were doing me a favour by being married to me, I should probably mind a lot. As it is, I'm just amused."
"By me?"
"Yes. You're rather sweet being all bad and sinful. But I think it's rather bitchy of you to let Stephen think you take him seriously."
"I suppose so," said Marcia. "But he likes it like that."
...an interesting dynamic there.
Ally wrote: "...an interesting dynamic there. "Yes indeed Ally. How are you getting on with it?
Getting back to Nigel Balchin more generally, anyone else curious about some of the other books in Nigel Balchin's bibliography?
Derek Collett sees some of the Balchin canon thus...
Gems:
The Small Back Room
Darkness Falls from the Air
Mine Own Executioner
A Sort Of Traitors
Sundry Creditors
The Fall Of The Sparrow
Intriguing oddities:
Lightbody on Liberty
Lord, I Was Afraid
Seen Dimly Before Dawn
A Way Through the Wood
Duds:
The Anatomy of Villainy
Kings of infinite space
I can certainly vouch for The Small Back Room (published in 1943) - which is another winner....
Less than 200 pages long, 'The Small Back Room’ is a realistic, memorable and ultimately tense and dramatic book which powerfully explores human frailty and workplace dynamics. I look forward to reading more novels by Nigel Balchin and if, like me, you are interested in books set in and around World War 2, then I especially recommend this.
Click here to read my review
Mod
Thanks Ally. I am sure you're spot on that the civil service has changed radically in the ensuing decades with only a few 'legacy' reminders of the mid 20th century era.
I recently read Eggs or Anarchy: The remarkable story of the man tasked with the impossible: to feed a nation at war
which is about Lord Woolton - a former businessman - being charged with organising rationing during the war and that had quite a lot about the civil service too, Ally.Ruth Dudley Edwards is another author who set her book (her first mystery
in the Civil Service.http://www.ruthdudleyedwards.co.uk/cr...
Nigeyb, I would surely love to read more by this author and have The Small Back Room on my kindle for when I get time.
Do report back Susan when you get to 'The Small Back Room' - I really enjoyed it too.Thanks for those other recommendations. I always enjoy books that evoke a credible sense of the workplace. A surprisingly rare thing given how much time most of us spend at work.
That's true. I will certainly read more by Balchin. I loved, Darkness Falls, so thanks for introducing me to - yet - another author!
I've decided to get in under the wire and read this one, so have just downloaded it on Kindle. The style of the start reminds me a bit of Hemingway.I remember having a Balchin splurge as a teenager and reading all the books of his I could get hold of at that time, but I don't think this was one of them.
The one I remember best (though even this memory is pretty vague) and was obsessed with for a time was The Fall Of The Sparrow, which seems to be very obscure now but I see was among the "gems" in your list, Nigeyb! I remember it as being about the downward progress through society of a rather waifish character.
That's wonderful Judy - a teenage Balchin fan! How did you stumble across his work?I think most of his book can be picked up fairly cheaply from second hand sellers - so there's no excuse for me not to go deeper.
How I came across him is lost in the mists of time, I'm afraid, Nigeyb. Probably my local or school library had some of them, as that was where I got most books as a teenager.I was keen on Nevil Shute around the same time and have got the two of them a bit mixed up in my mind over the years, but I don't know if there are actually many similarities between them. I must try him again too - No Highway is one of his set during WW2.
Thanks for the Nigel Balchin website link, Nigeyb - I've just been having a look through the titles mentioned there, and am not sure which of these I read 40 years ago, apart from The Small Back Room and The Fall of the Sparrow! Getting back to Darkness Falls from the Air, I'm imagining the characters as speaking with clipped, upper-crust voices, rather like Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard in Brief Encounter.
I do wonder to what extent people really did talk in the manner of Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard in Brief Encounter. In the same way that for years BBC presenters could only ever talk in the accepted manner, so perhaps did the majority of British films feature actors trained to talk with that very clear diction and annunciation. That said, I expect those voices you suggest are entire appropriate for these particular protagonists.
I'm a retired civil servant and I just came to the part where Clynes (?), the drunken old man, is being shuffled elsewhere. This is common civil service practice. Usually omitting details about the employee's servic record at the current location. As noted, my reading is slowed somewhat as my book is falling apart.
I just read that part too, Jan - quite shocking that he is given 'another chance', presumably with no mention of the fact that he is permanently 'tight' and sexually assaults all the typists!Bill's own attitude to secretary Doris isn't a lot better, either - making comments to her about her sex life and "smacking her bottom".
Yes, certainly there is a reason we have political correctness these days. People who deride it didn't grow up in the Seventies, as I did! I went to a Catholic school and we had a priest who liked you to sit on his knee and had wandering hands. I was lucky - my mother listened to me and she complained to the school. He was shuffled elsewhere too and I think that happened a lot, in workplaces and schools.
Clive James is quoted on the cover of the Kindle edition calling Balchin "The Missing Writer of the Forties", and I've just come across a massively long article by him about Balchin - I haven't got time to read this properly at the moment, but have had a skim and it looks interesting, so I will read it all. Looks as if it does discuss parts of the plots of the novels:http://www.clivejames.com/pieces/herc...
I love Clive James. I highly recommend Latest Readings, in which he talks of his reading since being diagnosed with a terminal condition and of his passion for books. His great undiscovered author was Olivia Manning, who is also one of my favourites.
From the bit of the article I've read, I was interested to see that James says: "Considering that Balchin nowhere sounded very much like Hemingway, it’s interesting that several contemporary critics should have concurred in deciding that he did.So far, I'm with the contemporary critics, as the similarity struck me immediately - I think he sounds very like Hemingway in the bits where Bill is drinking with his friends etc - for instance, near the beginning of the book:
"I had a drink while I waited for Ted and it went down very well and I had another, and that went down very well too. I told myself that I was beginning to drink too much and ordered another and shut my eyes. The one-pips were all very cheerful about something. I wondered whether they had one joke between them or one each. Anyhow, I wished I thought it was funny."
But it's not at all Hemingwayesque in the civil service bits, with all the focus on procedures and office politics, which I'm finding fascinating.
I've never read Hemingway, so I can't compare. I know, but he has just never appealed to me...
Mod
I really like some Hemingway - for instance A Farewell to Arms and For Whom the Bell Tolls. Also, I know this proved to be a group read which attracted strong feelings both for and against, but I thought his Paris memoirs, A Moveable Feast, were wonderful. I do love his prose style. But I'm not at all attracted by all the bullfighting etc.
Susan wrote: "I love Clive James. I highly recommend Latest Readings, in which he talks of his reading since being diagnosed with a terminal condition and of his passion for books. His great undi..."Ooh, I like him too and have been meaning to read Latest Readings. I also like Olivia Manning - I read her two wartime trilogies a while ago now, The Balkan Trilogy: "Great Fortune", "Spoilt City" and "Friends and Heroes" and The Levant Trilogy, and also liked the TV adaptation with Emma Thompson, Kenneth Branagh and Ronald Pickup.
Nigeyb wrote: "I do wonder to what extent people really did talk in the manner of Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard in Brief Encounter. In the same way that for years BBC presenters could only ever talk in the acce..."When you see or hear old interviews, I think quite a lot of people did talk like that, but I totally agree that all the other accents tended to be shut out from broadcasting, as you say, Nigeyb.
Bright Young Things
Books mentioned in this topic
Vulgar Tongues: An Alternative History of Slang (other topics)Vulgar Tongues: An Alternative History of Slang (other topics)
Latest Readings (other topics)
The Levant Trilogy (other topics)
The Balkan Trilogy (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Ernest Hemingway (other topics)Cathi Unsworth (other topics)
Nigel Balchin (other topics)
Max Décharné (other topics)
Max Décharné (other topics)
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Enjoy!