Landfall

MR. SHUTE’S power lies in his simplicity and straightforwardness, in the meticulous accuracy of his detail. This story of wartime aviation over and submarines in the English Channel is written with such sincerity and reality that one lives with the characters, through love and hate, death and destruction, misery and honor. It is war in petto as experienced by a small group. The author concludes: ‘So let them pass, small people of no great significance, caught up and swept together like dead leaves in the great whirlwind of the war. Wars come, and all the world is shattered by their blast. But through it all young people meet and marry; life goes on, though temples rock and the tall buildings start and crumble in the dust of their destruction.’

As in Ordeal, this new book from Mr. Shute brings the sad impact of war intimately home. It is a fine novel.