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A review by muggsyspaniel
Darkness Falls From The Air by Nigel Balchin
5.0
An absolutely outstanding book.
The plot is simple, a man, our narrator Bill Sarratt, works in the Civil Service during WWII and juggles his job with the love triangle he his wife and a chap named Stephen are involved in. There is little else in the novel but so much more.
Sarratt is a wonderfully sardonic narrator and the dialogue rings beautifully true in an old fashioned way.
There are some strange choices from Balchin in this novel, the started subplots which never go anywhere beyond their initial mention, the fact that we are never given very much of an idea what his job actually involves despite so much of the novel being spent following Sarratt at work. All these things left unsaid are just as important that way, it's a novel about the unsaid as far as I could see. The department he works in is almost as darkly comical as the Government of Joseph Heller's Good as Gold, as it says on the back of the edition I read "Whitehall 1940 - where the only sin was to do something"
As to the main thread of the story the affair between Marcia and Stephen, or rather Bill's take on it as we never actually see them alone together, it's brilliantly told.
Stephen is an artistic chap, again we don't really know what he does at all other than write. He loves to be the centre of attention and play the tortured artist and Bill's put downs of him are priceless. While Marcia and Bill's relationship is beautifully told without resorting to detailed descriptions of how they met or any of the usual stuff. Balchin tells his story with the least amount of detail possible and it's all the clearer for that.
So good I already ordered another book by Balchin before this one was finished.
The plot is simple, a man, our narrator Bill Sarratt, works in the Civil Service during WWII and juggles his job with the love triangle he his wife and a chap named Stephen are involved in. There is little else in the novel but so much more.
Sarratt is a wonderfully sardonic narrator and the dialogue rings beautifully true in an old fashioned way.
There are some strange choices from Balchin in this novel, the started subplots which never go anywhere beyond their initial mention, the fact that we are never given very much of an idea what his job actually involves despite so much of the novel being spent following Sarratt at work. All these things left unsaid are just as important that way, it's a novel about the unsaid as far as I could see. The department he works in is almost as darkly comical as the Government of Joseph Heller's Good as Gold, as it says on the back of the edition I read "Whitehall 1940 - where the only sin was to do something"
As to the main thread of the story the affair between Marcia and Stephen, or rather Bill's take on it as we never actually see them alone together, it's brilliantly told.
Stephen is an artistic chap, again we don't really know what he does at all other than write. He loves to be the centre of attention and play the tortured artist and Bill's put downs of him are priceless. While Marcia and Bill's relationship is beautifully told without resorting to detailed descriptions of how they met or any of the usual stuff. Balchin tells his story with the least amount of detail possible and it's all the clearer for that.
So good I already ordered another book by Balchin before this one was finished.