There's No Home by Alexander Baron

Alexander Baron's There's No Home is an interesting and unusual novel.  It's a war story that feels like a war story yet there are no battles.  Baron looks at the domestic side of war, but this one has a twist of sorts.  It's not the British homefront he focuses on but what happens when an invading army settles in during a lull in the fighting. 

It's 1943 and the Allies have overtaken the Germans on the island of Sicily sending them North to the Italian mainland.  What's left of the infantry after heavy fighting is allowed a respite as they await further orders.  The city of Catania, heavily bombarded, is empty of men save a few deserters, the elderly and the very young.  And the women who, as in every war, are left to carry on as best they can.  After four long years of war, hardships, deaths, and every conceivable upheaval, what everyone wants more than anything is some semblance of normalcy.  But what is normal in a time of war?  The men and women in this story do the best they can under increasingly difficult circumstances.

Baron tells a highly sympathetic story.  In a way there are no victors and there are no enemies, just people trying to survive and find some small degree of happiness along the way.  The battalion that comes to rest in Catania fill the city and are welcomed by the townspeople.  Not only do families take in the soldiers as their own, but for a few lucky men they also take up with the women who have lost or are waiting for their men who will hopefully return someday. Despite the fact there is the conqueror and the conquered they become one community dependent on each other.  The British offer the Italians food, some degree of stability and security and the Catanians welcome the soldiers into their homes and sometimes their beds giving them a sense of family and warmth and a feeling of belonging.

The story opens with the soldiers arriving and the people of the city watching from their doorways, taking in the fact that the bombardment has ceased.  For some of the women, the thought is "Men!".  Their lives have been filled with loneliness and sadness.  Some are widows, others are waiting for husbands.  Their lives still filled with traditional roles--mother, daughter, sister.  While this is a clash of cultures as well as a clash of the sexes to some degree, Baron tells a story that concentrates less on those aspects as a subject than a circumstance.  For the women a world is opened up to them by the British for a look into something bigger and foreign.  

The story shifts from character to character, little dramas are played out--soldier, Italian, adults, children.  It feels initially as though this will be a series of vignettes but slowly the stories of Sergeant Craddock and Graziella, a young mother unsure of whether her husband is alive or dead, comes into focus.  As other soldiers are absorbed into families, or take up with the single (or alone in any case) women, Joe Craddock befriends Graziella.  She resists his overtures at first, but soon the two can no longer ignore their attraction.  Joe had not been long married when he went off to war.  His marriage is almost a cliché and his wife and daughter almost strangers. 

The story does follow a narrative arc.  Things happen both good and bad--just as you would expect during a time of war, but the sense of domesticity cannot be sustained indefinitely. And what happens when orders are given for the men to resume and prepare for battle?  Baron beautifully, and what felt like very realistically, presents this almost idyllic interlude.  Idyllic only in that this drama and brief moments of happiness should occur in the run up to the Allied invasion of the mainland.

Baron knew well of what he wrote.  His story is almost as interesting as the story which he tells.  He himself was an infantryman who was garrisoned in the town of Catania during the war.  In the front cover of my book there is a photograph of an anonymous young italian woman that was amongst Baron's belongings, which makes the reader wonder what their relationship was during his lull in the war.  He was politically active, radically so, and a member of the Communist Party.  Through his political readings he became interested in the 'Women Question" and this surely informed his own writing.  There's No Home focuses on the "fortunes of women".

"...it's a measure of Baron's talent that, in the end, we don't know who to pity more--the men heading into the horror of war or the women left behind".

According to the afterword, Baron was immensely popular and well received critically when he was most active writing.  Although he wrote a number of books it is a set of three about WWII that garnered the most attention, and they sold in vast numbers.  However like so many other respected authors his books faded from view, possibly according to the afterword due to a combination of factors--he was (and Elizabeth Taylor also comes to mind) very private and would shy away from the limelight.  He also wrote from the infantryman's point of view rather than the officer class.  And his writing style is "effortlessly simple" and "unsensational" which perhaps made him easy to overlook.  Whatever the case, it is a pity he is not better known, and I am happy to have made his "acquaintance".  I would like to find his other work and have added him to my list of authors to read more of.

"Baron has fashioned a novel that is once masculine and feminine, a war story and a love story, an affirmation of the human spirit, and a tragedy in short, a book about the whole of human life."

I read this as part of Caroline's War and Literature Readalong.  You can read her thoughts on the book here.

Comments

[Stefanie]

This sounds like a lovely and sensitively written story. I wonder how close to autobiographical it is?

[Debbie Rodgers @Exurbanis]

I wanted to read this as part of the read-along but couldn't find a copy in the Nova Scotia library system. I'm on a book-buying ban for a year so . . . :-(

[Danielle]

I wonder that myself. I think he must have experienced many of the things he wrote about. Also I am intrigued by the idea of the photo of the young woman which appears on the inside cover. I think the photos was simply found amongst this things. I always find this sort of thing fascinating!

[Danielle]

Good for you for not buying books and only borrowing them. I would never be able to manage it! Definitely add this one to your wishlist at least. Maybe you will come across it later--I thought it really well done and hope to read some of his other books eventually.

[Caroline]

Thanks for joining and the lovely review.
I think it's very autobiographical. Not the story as such but the details. I'd like to read another one soon. It's not justified that he's forgotten. Sure it's not a "big" story but it's well told and appealing.

[Danielle]

I'm surprised too that he has fallen out of popularity. I think the reasoning was that he was not one to promote himself--which sounds a lot like Elizabeth Taylor! He just needs someone famous to champion him again--it sounded as though he sold a lot of books in his day. It was a great choice. Out of curiosity--have you been working on next year's list? I still do want to read the two that I didn't finish earlier this year....

[Caroline]

Yes, I have and it's almost finished.
It's inspired by someone's comment on my movie blog. I had totally forgitten what 2014 means. I'll be focussing heavily - at least 10 books - on WWI and want a nice mix. I found the diary of a nurse, which I think you'd like as well and some diaries of the trenches. To make it more bearable (some of it will be dark) I'll add a few historical novels in the vein of Tha last Summer and Pat Barker's latest Toby's Room. Poems might be included as well. Not sure yet but I can see where it's going. It will be heavily English though. I guess 8 books or more might be British. Size is still a major concern or I would have added Parade's End. Have you read that? Or seen it?

[Danielle]

Love hearing these details and I can't wait to see what the final list is like. Next year will be the 100 year anniversary of the beginning of the war--I bet there are loads of new books out about it. Do you know I have never read any Pat Barker? So I am looking forward to any of her books. Poetry would be cool. I have not read Parade's End, but I would be willing to give it a go--it is a long book, but maybe if it was a summer read? Maybe it's one I should check out in any case...