After the Raid

by Chris Paling

The Second World War. London. Gregory Swift returns to his home to find it destroyed by an air raid. His wife is dead. Travelling by train to Manchester to stay with his sister, he encounters a woman and boy. A series of surreal events unravel as Swift's mind becomes more and more fevered and reality harder to define. As the vertiginous atmosphere develops, the pieces of Swift's memory forge to produce an even more horrific reality - he had a son, is he alive or dead? Who was the lost boy he met on the train? What happened to Swift in the unaccounted-for days in a mental institution? And will the woman help him find his way back to sanity by kick-starting his memory?. Intense, dark and unsettling, this novel which confronts the psychosis of fear with a rare energy and insight.

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Born in 1956 in Derby, Chris Paling studied social sciences at the University of Sussex. He started working as a studio manager for BBC radio in 1981. In the early 90s he had a Thirty Minute Theatre play called Way Station produced on BBC Radio 4. He wrote more radio plays and later began writing novels.

Chris Paling is married with two children, Sarah and Thomas, and lives in Brighton.

Reviews

[Gerhard · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you prefer your fiction to consist of plotlines that dovetail neatly at all times, then "After the Raid" by Chris Paling will probably frustrate you endlessly. In this novel, the truth is always tantalizingly out of reach; sometimes comprehension glimmers on the edges of one's understanding only to shatter into myriad illusive pieces at the next turn of the page. But I have learned that it is sometimes the best policy, while delving into a text that keeps its cards close to its chest, to sit back and allow the narrative to flow through your consciousness unchecked. Just enjoy what is being offered without necessarily posing any disruptive questions. In this particular case, there is plenty to relish on the sublime journey to the point where the fragmented threads finally mesh into a scintillating whole -- not the least of which is the author's polished prose; muscular one moment and graceful the next. The answers will come if you are patient -- maybe not tied up in a tidy little package with a shiny bow and every I and T on the attached label dotted and crossed, but enough of an answer to put into dazzling perspective Paling's tightly-reined control over his enigmatic material.

Not a lot more can be said as it would mean traversing a minefield of spoilers, but I can reveal that the novel opens on the day after a particularly destructive German air raid on London. Amidst the confusion and chaos of clearing up operations as a result of this latest bombing (evocatively described by the author), Gregory Swift is in a taxi on his way to Euston station. His ultimate destination is Manchester, where he intends to stay over at his married sister's in an effort to escape the general melancholia pervading a London blitzed nightly by relentless enemy aircraft. From this point onward the story is splintered in four different directions: a nearly deserted village in the English countryside; the sister's house in Manchester; a hospital where Swift finds himself an inmate; and back in London where these separate strands will come together.

I was totally drawn into the strange world of Gregory Swift, and I kept on turning pages with a growing sense of admiration for the subtle way in which this unusual novel involved me on so many different levels. What a pity that it is not better known to the reading public at large.