The Clouds Above [Paperback]

Andrew Greig (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 29, 2002

Len, an RAF Sergeant pilot, is living for the moment, fully aware that he may not survive the brutal and horrifying air campaigns of World War II. Despite the chaos around him, Len falls in love for the first time, with Stella, a young radar operator. While Len risks his life every day fighting the war in the air, Stella tries to adapt to service life: sharing crowded barracks with other women, watching her fellow WAAFs get killed, and listening to the battles in the air on her headset. As the battles in the skies over Britain intensify, Len and Stella wrestle with the foolhardiness of wartime romance.

Told in chapters alternately narrated by the two lovers, and drawn from author Andrew Greig's mother's diaries chronicling her experiences as a nurse during the war, The Clouds Above deftly portrays both the adrenaline-rush horrors of aerial combat and the fragile but heightened romantic passions of wartime.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

From Scottish poet and novelist Greig (When They Lay Bare) comes this intensely lyrical and nostalgic novel of wartime love between a young RAF pilot and a comely radar trainee in 1940s England. When Sgt. Len Westbourne meets university-educated Stella Gardam at an RAF dance, it's probable that the difference in their social classes will preclude an intimate relationship. But as bombs begin to rain down on England, and dogfights erupt in the sky, their hesitant romance blossoms into something far more serious. Despite the wartime atmosphere, there's a curious lack of tension in Len and Stella's affair, but eventually their cautious avowal of love illustrates the real poignancy of common wartime liaisons. There are some moments in which Greig seems on the verge of capturing something unique and delicate, but the frequent changes in point of view somewhat dissipate the drama. Rather than focus on the urgency driving the lovers into each other's arms, Greig conveys the day-to-day details of wartime, the weariness and the fear, an atmosphere that grounds the tale in reality. The liveliest characters are Stella's buoyant friend Maddy and Len's equally boisterous counterpart, Polish pilot Tad, both of whom meet sad ends. With the WWII setting, the romance amid chaos and the author's previous work as a poet, the publisher is obviously hoping for comparisons with The English Patient. While Greig isn't quite a match for Ondaatje, his narrative slowly acquires depth and poignancy, and is sure to appeal to those in "the vanishing generation" to whom Greig dedicates his novel, who recall those days of courage and glory and loss.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

The author of five poetry collections and several novels, Greig (When They Lay Bare) acknowledges deriving much of his inspiration here from the many works that have been written about the Battle of Britain (by Len Deighton, Angus Calder, and Richard Hillary, for instance). Through his young, energetic characters, we view a generation desperate to get through the war and return to normalcy, stability, and calm something they yearn for with an urgency they believe to be well beyond what their parents felt at the end of Word War I. Their lives between the raids and sorties are filled with gin, dancing, and passion as well as idealism and grief. They run for the countryside during their infrequent leaves and cling to each other desperately. What makes this more than just another potential screenplay for the History Channel is Greig's talent as a poet, which shows throughout this beautifully crafted narrative. He tells his story with respect for those who lived through that terrible time. A British Red Badge of Courage, this book deserves a wide readership. Highly recommended. Susan Clifford Braun, Aerospace Corp., El Segundo, CA
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Plume (October 29, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0452283604
• ISBN-13: 978-0452283602
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,354,766 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This glorious book will break your heart and make it soar!, December 7, 2002

By 

Bookreporter (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Clouds Above (Paperback)

I was born (barely) while World War II was still being fought. And, even though it was over two months later, to my parents' generation it was the defining event and I grew up in its shadow. The Battle of Britain, especially, was a David-and-Goliath story to make my heart pound: the exploits of the Royal Air Force, the grim courage of the civilian population, the small beleaguered island nation against the Nazi war machine. What a drama.

Although THE CLOUDS ABOVE has all the suspense and pathos you'd expect from a novel set in those legendary days, it also goes deeper, giving a real sense of what it was like to be alive then. It evokes not only the outer signposts of a country under siege (the constant danger, profound fatigue, late trains, rationed food) but its inner landscape --- for this book, as its subtitle suggests, is a romance. Drawing on the wartime diaries of his mother, who was a nurse, Andrew Greig alternates between two voices: Len Westbourne, a young RAF pilot and Stella Gardam, a WAAF radar operator trained to spot enemy aircraft. The device makes sense both structurally and emotionally. We get the queasy normality of life on the ground versus the dizzy, sped-up horror of aerial battles. We get middle-class, university-educated, initially snobbish Stella versus gangly country boy Len, whose father works in a factory. And we get the slow, unbearably sweet progress of their love, which they first resist as too big a risk (the RAF was not known for its long lifespans), until the war makes them see that no longer is anything safe nor is there any reason to hold back.

The war in this novel is more than a conflict --- it is an enormous catalyst for change. "One day there may be a generation without a great war," Stella thinks. "What will they do then to know themselves?" Adolescent habits and attachments fall away as planes are shot down, radar huts bombed and dance halls blown to smithereens. Conventions and social divisions loosen and totter --- Stella makes friends with Maddy Phillps, an ebullient if "unrespectable" charmer and with her "posh" sergeant, Foxy Farringdon (perfect teeth, perfect nails, country house, upper-class drawl). Len draws close to a Pole serving in the RAF, Tadeusz, a bitter, tragic figure whose country has already fallen victim to Hitler. The pilots, in fact, form a club more select than any elite London establishment.

Both of them try not to become morally numb --- Len agonizes over what it means to kill, while Stella imagines a young Fraulein at a radar screen on the other side of the Channel. They struggle to live and, at the same time, prepare to die, recognizing finally that this contradiction is the human condition, not just a byproduct of war. "How can we love anyone in wartime?" Stella thinks as she and Len ride back on the train from a week's leave in the country. "It's too stupid. Then I looked round the train . . . and saw that everyone on it was going to die, sooner or later. How can we love in the face of that? Then again, how can we not? Wartime is like real life but more so."

Part of the "more so" is that war tends to knock out both past and future; life is experienced mostly in the present tense. To reflect this immediacy, Greig tells his story in short bursts, moment by moment. Some of them are unspeakable (Stella's coworker lying dead after a raid; Len blowing off a Luftwaffe pilot's head), while others are extraordinarily joyful. One summer day, Len and Stella picnic by the river and she swims naked. They have begun to allow themselves to think of marriage and children. Len imagines that he may survive; Stella, in an act of faith and hope, makes love without contraceptives. At least for the afternoon, they snatch back the future that the war has stolen from them.

Greig is a poet as well as a novelist (THE CLOUDS ABOVE is the first of his books to be published in this country) and it shows. This is a beautifully written novel, with a fresh, unsentimental use of language that feels natural to the story. It is as if the intensity of war and love awakens both Stella and Len to a fierce lyricism they might not have otherwise achieved. "I still loved flying, that was something," Len thinks. "That lift as I came unstuck from the earth again. The sense of dreamy freedom, for all the noise, as I watched dabs of clouds passing by beneath, and below them the green fields, roads, and farmhouses, as we set our course for War." Or Stella: "Len's youth and vulnerability and kisses had dragged the heart out of me, and it lay so open I wondered if it couldn't be seen beating in the moonlight."

THE CLOUDS ABOVE received excellent reviews, but it hasn't been talked about much. It should be. Get this glorious book. Read it and give it to friends. It will break your heart and also make it soar.

--- Reviewed by Kathy Weissman

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars poignant without sappiness, August 13, 2002

By 

Porter Crane (Wokingham, United Kingdom) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Clouds Above : A Novel of Love and War (Hardcover)

This lovely book serves as a shattering reminder of the horrors that our grandparents faced in order to allow us to be so free and easy. We walk along streets and buildings that once were bombed, where people died, where people fought. It is so easy to forget when the scars are so well hidden. I am glad that writers like Greig remind us how lucky we are.

Written as a first person narrative (ostensibly as the journals of the protagonanists), but taking the views of two people, it can occasionally be confusing as you jump from one persons thoughts to another without warning. But the first person double narrative works in giving insight to two people as they fight for themselves, for us, for each other. It is a love story and a war story. You know these people. They could be you, caught up in something world changing and horrifying. It made me close my eyes and be thankful that they made these sacrifices so that I wouldn't have to.

4.0 out of 5 stars Not an ordinary love story, August 14, 2002

By 

Mary T. Miller "dunnettreader" (St. Louis, MO) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Clouds Above : A Novel of Love and War (Hardcover)

I found this book in Scotland last fall with the title "That Summer", so I wasn't aware that it was available in the US.
The story is a bit slow to get started. It isn't clear at first that we have two narrator/characters plus an omniscient narrator. I set the book done several times before it finally gripped me & I had to finish it in the middle of the night.

Greig tries to make us understand what it was like to live with uncertainty, fear, love, & death from moment to moment. The characters seem to be discovering themselves as we watch. Len & Stella examine every feeling as it occurs. This may sound tedious, but it illuminates what I find most interesting about WWII. I want to understand how people felt, how life looked to them. I am not interested in planes or tactics, although I understand that many are. Far more interesting to me are the secrets of the human heart. WWII, and the Battle of Britain in this story, brought out the best & the worst in people. Len & Stella confront the hate, love, grief, & joy that is part of life. They find their love for each other as they learn to face all these emotions.
"The Clouds Above" is like a tightrope act. Will the characters survive? They face danger all the way as we hope & pray that they will make it to the other side.