Customer Reviews

Blue Man Falling

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Blue Man Falling deserves to be a great success. Frank Barnard has managed to combine a gripping adventure story of Hurricane fighter pilots with a moving and totally convincing account of the tragedy and drama of the phony war. The book gradually builds pace through the skillful use of flashbacks and scenes which contrast the relative calm of pre-occupation Paris with the turmoil of the German advance. The author clearly shares in the adrenalin rush of an aerial dogfight, but equally clearly recognizes the pain and horror experienced by combatants and civilians on either side of any conflict.

After reading Blue Man Falling, you will not only have enjoyed a hugely entertaining story; you will have learnt more about the early days of World War II (and probably the Spanish Civil War, too), and very likely wondered how you yourself would have acted in the heat of battle.

I think it's a bit unfair to judge Frank Barnard's BLUE MAN FALLING by contrasting it to PIECE OF CAKE by Derek Robinson, but it's difficult not to. Both novels take as their subject the Royal Air Force fighter pilots in France in 1940. The scope of each book is different, and the styles are different, but the subject matter is the exact same. Mr Barnard claims to have never read Robinson's books, for fear of being influenced by them; I think he ought to read them to make sure he doesn't repeat anything.

That said, I'll try to review the book, and not what I think the book should have been.

There are two main characters: the Englishman Kit Curtis and the American Ossie Wolf. The first is decent and a little diffident; the second is a born fighter. They're also both ace pilots, which makes the book inch uncomfortably towards Biggles territory. While reading the book I found myself not caring how either hero made out in the battle scenes; I merely wished they were more interesting. Other characters play minor roles. The French civilians are uniformly cowardly, anti-British, and unlikable. The Germans (we meet several face-to-face, conveniently) are to a man brutal and sadistic. Both French and German characters seem to show up briefly only so Mr Barnard can contrast them to the stalwart Brits and Americans. If the foreigners are wrong, he seems to be saying, we must be right.

The dogfighting scenes sprinkled throughout the book are efficient, but never quite exciting. They lack a sense of realism: not realism in the tactics, but in the tactile experience of flying a small airplane ten thousand feet up, wrenching through stomach-churning maneuvers, and getting shot at. They're strangely placid, and more interested in delivering standard action-movie thrills than in actually placing the reader in the cockpit and making him feel the fear and excitement of combat.

Mr Barnard's prose also tends towards efficiency. There are no outstanding tics, and it's easily readable, but none of his descriptions stand out as particularly well-written. Dialogue and action is all average. Kit Curtis, one of our heroes, speaks French, and Mr Barnard helpfully translates all the "French" dialogue into English for us. He does this very literally, robbing the language of personality. No contractions, no colloquialisms: ordinary, readable, boring. He also takes every opportunity to show off his research, treating us to bullet calibers and engine specs, sometimes interrupting the pace of action scenes to do so.

I'll stick with my three-star rating, because the book is easy to read and not absolutely terrible. It's also not anything other than ordinary, and a bit bland. Readers starved for fiction about fighter planes will enjoy it, but it offers nothing new to the genre -- or to English literature in general.

Quite unlike any other work I've read based on the happenings during early WW2. The detail was particuarly impressive and the reader will absorb an enormous amount of historical fact in an easily assimilated way without appearing to do so. The persona and life of the main character, the well brought up and slightly naive,unworldly young fighter pilot from a priveleged background, is particularly well drawn and totally beleivable. There are one or two sub plots and beautifully set up characters that add enormous interest. The contrast between the hastily snatched social breaks and the chronicles of the death and destruction whilst flying against the enemy reflects no doubt exactly how it was and again is particularly well drawn and sensitively written. The lifetime of the average frontline fighter pilot at the time being measured in months at best. A lot of meticulous research has been done for sure by Frank Barnard to produce a great read that is hard to put down once started. I look forward to his next one, as he must go will surely go from strength to strength.

"Blue Man Falling" by Frank Barnard , is a fascinating glimpse into the fragile, often bizarre days of the "Phony War", that "wishful thinking" period of WW II when few believed the Nazis would actually invade France. Accordingly, one day we find an RAF Hurricane pilot engaging in a dogfight with his German counterpart and the next we see him enjoying a drink in a Parisian cafe. This jarring juxtaposition of moods illustrates all too well the surrealistic nature of that period. Mr. Barnard has a great ability to capture a "sense of place" whether he's describing a French farmhouse, a British barrack, or the Hotel Crillon. He also portrays convincingly the comaraderie and the rivalry among the "blue men", as well as their romances. I found this to be a very readable and well written book about a period not widely understood.

Derek Robinson's "Piece of Cake" is my favorite novel telling the same story that Frank Barnard revisits with "Blue Man Falling." Stories of the Fall of France are not numerous. At first I was a little concerned as there were many similarities between "Blue Man" and "Piece of Cake." The American pilot in "Blue Man" seems very similar to the one in "Piece of Cake." As the novel progressed it became clear that this was a different story and it was very enjoyable. Anyone who has read "Piece of Cake" should enjoy "Blue Man." If I have a complaint it is that I would have liked to get to know the other pilots of the squadron much better. "Blue Man" has a secondary plot which means there is not as much time devoted to flying and the lives of the pilots as one might like. Still all in all a very enjoyable book.