Customer Reviews

In Pale Battalions (Ulverscroft Large Print Series)

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

If you haven't ever read Goddard, start here, please! This book, despite dealing with some really thorny issues such as war, mistaken identity, blackmail, and abuse, retains such a misty quality about the narrative that you feel as if you are walking in someone else's dream. The mystery, far from being, shallow and gorey, like some American thrillers, insteady takes it's tension from a deep, involved and complicated series of realtionships and webs of lies that intruige the mind.

The story begins and ends with a mother taking her daughter on a walk through the WWI battlefield monuments of France, and explaining what has consumed her for most of her life: who her father was. The answer, given to her by a strange old artist, will surprise you.

If you want a deep, intelligent mystery, you must read this book!

With so many plot twists and turns this is a book you can't put down until you've finally finished it. Most of the book is set during the time of World war I. Without being preachy the reader has insight to how the characters feel about the war, and how it changes their lives. Few, if any WW I vets are left to tell their story, I think that Robert Goddard gives us a little understanding into what fighting in the trenches meant, and the waste of lives that ensued. All the characters are well developed, but yet the author still manages to surprise the reader. Just when the reading thinks he/she has worked out the plot, there is another twist that leaves the reader breathless and wanting more. This is my favorite Robert Goddard book.

This is the story of a woman's search for the truth about the identity of her parents and the circumstances of her birth and early childhood. It is certainly not the first book I've ever read on that theme, but it is the best.

The woman, Leonora, was born during the first World War. Her father was a war hero who died in the murderous killing fields of the European slaughter. But wait a minute: the dates - her own birth and her purported father's death - don't match up. What is the real truth?

Leonora remembers Olivia, her witch of a step-grandmother, and and of course remembers what Olivia told her about her origins. But there wasn't much detail there, and Olivia was so spiteful that anything she said had to be taken with a grain of salt. And over the course of her life, Leonora manages to piece together the truth. Maybe.

Leonora learns some of the stories by virtue of her own research, and some other things she learns accidentally when she is contacted by people who were in a position to know SOME of the story. It is that word "some" that makes this book so fascinating. No single individual or set of documents is able to produce a logically consistent explanation for everything that happened. There is always at least one loose end. But Leonora persists, and finally, as an elderly woman, she believes she has pieced together the whole story.

The book is told flashback fashion, as Leonora relates the entire story to her daughter Penelope, who is by now a grown woman. And it can't escape the reader's attention that almost every bit of information Leonora has acquired has come to her as part of an oral history, related by someone who might have his or her own axe to grind. Once we come to the end, however, the bits and pieces hang together logically - in fact, brilliantly logically, as they always do with Goddard. Somehow the uncertainty about whether we really have the entire truth seems to make the ending more satisfactory, not less.

For me, one criterion for evaluating a book is: does each page make me want to read the next one? Perhaps more than any other writer, Goddard answers that question with a resounding "Yes." He is simply the best writer I have ever read for constructing complex plots that fit together logically with no holes. This is as good an introduction as any to his impressive talent.

It was poignant reading this book the week of Remembrance. While I have read many books about WWI, I never cease to be affected when I read another. This book is very well written. It has that soft, English quality with depictions of stately manor homes, weather, proper English gentlemen. But it also uncovers the seedy underside that is so often depicted about Victorian-Edwardian England: perversion, abuse, dishonor. This tale though has some very unusual twists to it and every time I thought I had figured the whole story out, it took yet another one.
I have read one other Goddard and this is by far his best!

It is difficult to classify this book. It's a romance. It's historic fiction, plus you could call it a "thriller." It's a mystery as well. I throughly enjoyed the novel and a year later went back for a re-read. It was still captivating.

This is an excellent book. Goddard has written about some amazing characters that remain with you long after the book is done. This is also one of his less "character heavy" books. Sometimes there are too many characters to keep up with but this down it is down to the minimum. There are several twists and turns with a surprise ending. Goddard's books occasionally are difficult to get going with the middle being the most exciting portion. This book started out exciting and was a page-turner until the end. Highly recommended.

Why are such great books so rarely seen or advertised and in this country only available as expensive trade paperbacks. It is almost as if they are trying to hide this amazing author with his brilliant novels. Dear Amazon.com maybe you have an answer to this? Please write back and let me know, if you have an answer

I recently discovered this author after reading a column by Stephen King about his favorite books of 2008. He mentioned this author and how dazzled his was by the excellence of his writing. I agree! I recently purchased this and two other of his novels, and I plan to read them all. Mr. Goddard combines historical backgrounds with very compelling fiction. Treat yourself today and purchase one of Mr. Goddards novels. You won't be able to put the book down.

Six months after her husband's sudden death, Leonora Galloway sets off for a holiday in Paris with her daughter Penelope. At last the time has come when secrets can be shared and explanations begin...
Their journey starts with an unscheduled stop at the imposing Thiepval Memorial to the dead of the Battle of the Somme near Amiens. Amongst those commemorated is Leonora's father. The date of his death is recorded as 30th April, 1916. But Leonora wasn't born until 14th March 1917.
Penelope at once supposes a simple wartime illegitimacy as the clue to her mother's unhappy childhood and the family's sundered connections with her aristocratic heritage, about which she has always known so little. But nothing could have prepared her, or the reader, for the extraordinary story that is about to unfold.
The story is very cleverly designed, every event fits into its place like in a giant gigsaw puzzle. Little by little the reader discovers what secrets lie behind Leonora's past. The book is extremely well read by Tony Britton for BBC audiobooks.

It is difficult to be so subtle and so dazzling at the same time, but Robert Goddard pulls it off in this mesmerizing novel. Once again, Goddard's mastery of the language alone makes the book a joy to read, and confirms my feeling that British writers -- Simon Mawer and Rennie Airth are other examples -- have an edge over us Americans when it comes to language. Chaucer and Shakespeare are lurking in their descriptions, their dialogue.

In Pale Battalions also has a finely crafted plot. It is part murder mystery, but so much more than that. It deals with World War I and the hopelessness and futility of that conflict.

But the war itself is just a backdrop for a study in how challenging trust and integrity can be, how easily we are susceptible to corruption, and how difficult it is to be tolerant of our own failings and the flaws of others. Although the tribulations of the family of Lord Powerstock are particularly dramatic, the impact on the family members is not so different from the more mundane trials that all of us have experienced in family life. The secrets and the lies that follow through the generations are told here, whereas most of us may never be aware of the hidden events in our family trees.

When he is given leave to convalesce for a wound sustained in the Somme, Tom Franklin goes to stay with the family of his friend and commander, John Hallows, who was reported killed in action earlier. He falls in love with Hallows' wife, Leonora, who seems caught up in a web of blackmail and who surprisingly has become pregnant shortly after her husband's death. The conniving of Leonora's step-mother-in-law and an American adventurer intent on gaining control of the estate set Franklin and Leonora both fateful journeys that do not have happy endings.

Their are further twists and turns as the anonymity imposed by the war leads to a succession of mistaken identities and past failings of family members have consequences in succeeding generations. Goddard contrives to have a number of first person narrators tell the story, and not all of them are reliable. He slowly draws back the veils revealing a new dimension of truth to a picture we thought we had figured out, right down to the last pages with a final, surprising twist.

Reading this often tragic tale, you cannot keep your same certitudes about what constitutes courage or cowardice, or even right or wrong. Can you combat evil only with good, or must it be fought in kind?

The story stretches over four generations so many of the main characters are dead by the end. This lends their story a fatalistic perspective -- in the end, what really mattered in their lives? There is the hope that Leonora's daughter, another Leonora, and her daughter, Penelope, have grown in character from the revelations about their family history. The same may be true for us as readers.