Out Of The Shelter

by David Lodge

Librarian note: This a previously-published edition of ISBN 0140083758.

The restrictions of a wartime childhood in London and subsequent post-war shortages have done little to enrich Timothy's early youth. But everything changes when Timothy's glamorous older sister, Kath, invites him to spend the summer at Heidelberg.

Genres: Fiction, Humor, British Literature, Novels, Coming Of Age, Historical Fiction, Germany

282 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1970

About the author

David John Lodge was an English author and critic. A literature professor at the University of Birmingham until 1987, some of his novels satirise academic life, notably the "Campus Trilogy" – Changing Places: A Tale of Two Campuses (1975), Small World: An Academic Romance (1984) and Nice Work (1988). The second two were shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Another theme is Roman Catholicism, beginning from his first published novel The Picturegoers (1960). Lodge also wrote television screenplays and three stage plays. After retiring, he continued to publish literary criticism. His edition of Twentieth Century Literary Criticism (1972) includes essays on 20th-century writers such as T.S. Eliot. In 1992, he published The Art of Fiction, a collection of essays on literary techniques with illustrative examples from great authors, such as Point of View (Henry James), The Stream of Consciousness (Virginia Woolf) and Interior Monologue (James Joyce), beginning with Beginning and ending with Ending.

Reviews

[Stela · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not the David Lodge I know and love, but an interesting reading though, especially about the last years of war and the years after that seen through the eyes of an adolescent.

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

A coming of age story of teenage boy, Timothy, in the post war years. Having grown up in an austere environment with rationing still gripping the country, he is invited to spend a couple of weeks in Heidelberg by his sister, Kate, who works for the American army. The holiday is an eye-opener and culture shock for Tim as he enters a colourful world where the word 'rationing' is unknown - except to the Germans. Life for Kate is one big party - although there are darker undercurrents and hints of the paranoid suspicions later to develop into McCarthyism.
I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. It's one of those 'put you there in the moment' books that gives a magnificent sensory image of what it was like to live in immediate post war Europe.
My only quibble is that the novel just suddenly stops in mid-stride. I felt the ending could have been more rounded out and satisfactory. I would love to have seen Timothy at home after his holiday and interracting with his parents, but it didn't happen. It's not enough to detract from the five stars though, and I'd certainly reccomend this one.

[Lorenzo Berardi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Who could have wondered that once Davide Lodge wrote a novel like this?

We have no visiting professors here neither Catholic couples coping with unwanted pregnancies, but a surprising half self-biographical story about a British teenager named Timothy visiting an Americanised Heidelberg in the early 1950s.

Coming from the grey, depressing/depressed and starvation obsessed Britain of post World War II, young Timothy Young (sic!) experiences a stunning blowout of food, goods of all sorts and, yes, hormones.

In this process I've found particularly convincing the decision of ignoring romanticism. Unlike many other literary-fictioned teenagers Timothy Young doesn't yearn for a chaste kiss, but aims higer..er, pardon, lower. Nevertheless, he's far too shy and goofy for seizing the day. You may like it or not, but this way of thinking is extremely realistic as not all the youngsters were and are exactly passing through the same sorrows of young Werther.

We never know anything about, say, the color of the eyes, the delicacy of the features or the softness of the hair of a girl named Gloria Rose. What we know is that she may show her breasts for one dollar and this is what later makes Timothy pining for her. Without struggling too much.
Gloria Rose in all her apparent, almost mythological exuberance stands as an updated version of James' Daisy Miller while Timothy Young is an aspiring Goldmund with nothing of his inborn beauty and subtle malice.

Overall, "Out of the Shelter" is narrated with the usual skillfulness by one of the greatest contemporary British novelists.
The first chapter about the London bombings is unforgettable. The Heidelberg parts are not always at the same level of the brilliant opening while the last pages with a grown-up Timothy were completely unnecessary.

Anyway, it's such a shame that this book is also one of the less, if not the least, known among the ones written by David Lodge.

[Julia Rodas · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought of my father a great deal as I read this early David Lodge novel. Set largely in post-war Germany among an American military set, this tender coming-of-age story has a strong air of the autobiographical and it lent some flavor to my dad's tales of being stationed in Germany in the early 1960s. It was great to get another version of the paternal narrative but with Lodge's voice; defamiliarizing the story has given it dimension, has made me think about the various players in that arena as having more real humanity.

Like Lodge's other writing, this is an unapologetically comic text. Though it lacks the literary maturity and complexity of the campus novels and his other, later fiction, Out of the Shelter is still decidedly Lodge-y, looking keenly at situations of conflict from a number of sympathetic perspectives, even when these might otherwise seem oppositional.

Perhaps because it's a story of adolescent becoming, I'm a little more struck by the sexual situations and conflicts in this novel than in some of the others. While Lodge always lingers over this stuff in ways that are clearly shaped by his Roman Catholic upbringing, I haven't found the sexual aspects of his other books as troubling as in this one; particularly poignant is his description of early erotic play with a girl neighbor during their nights in a London bomb shelter, the combination of innocence and experience of this moment resonating strongly with the narrator's larger story and identity.

17 April 2012

[Colin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a real treat - thoroughly enjoyable from beginning to end. David Lodge's novels always combine rich entertainment and real substance. Out of the Shelter is a Bildungsroman of sorts, following the transformative experiences of Timothy from young childhood in South London during the Blitz through his coming of age on a trip to visit his older sister Kate in Heidelberg in the early 1950s. Kate has been working for the US army since the war, and has already left the shelter of her family and austerity Britain far behind. Timothy's time with her opens his eyes to both the devastation of Germany and the Germans' determined efforts at rebuilding their country and their economy, and the conspicuous and (often) uncaring consumption of their American occupiers. Wonderful and thought-provoking stuff! C

[Anda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good read. Nice book, not too deep not too shallow, about maturity and wisdom, about WW2 and the preconceptions you have of your enemy. Made me wanna visit Heidelberg, that's for sure :)

Also, gives a good glimpse into life in Britain after the war - who knew it looked so much like Romania under the communism?!

[Agnes Fontana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Peut-être mon Lodge favori même si on s'écarte de l'humour habituel de l'auteur. Dans ce roman d'apprentissage qui évite les gros sabots, le personnage va trouver sa voie entre la gravité excessive, qui empêche d'avancer, représentée par ses parents et par l'Angleterre, et la légèreté excessive, incarnée par sa soeur et les USA (puisqu'elle est partie travailler dans une base militaire américaine). La scène finale,où le narrateur voit se surimposer à l'image de sa jeune épouse qui plonge dans la piscine, celle de son amie d'enfance qui est sortie de l'abri pendant un bombardement et n'est jamais revenue, et où explose finalement cette anxiété qui ne l'a jamais quitté, est bouleversante. Où l'on voit toute l'inquiétude qui sous-tend l'humour de Lodge.

[Dpdwyer · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an early David Lodge novel, and now one of my favorites. It relates the coming of age of Timothy Young, first as a child during the Blitz, and later as an adolescence in the years of scarcity in London after WWII. Timothy eyes are opened to the greater world when, at 16, he travels to Heidelberg, where his sister works in the American reconstruction effort. The Americans do not come off well. Much like the British in India and embassy folk everywhere, they are overpaid and pampered, and set an extravagant example for the struggling locals. Lodge is warm hearted, dryly humorous, and a master of the telling detail.

[Todd · Rating 5 out of 5]

Out of Shelter is my favorite of Lodge's works. The story has all of the characteristics of a great read. It begins with tragedy and moves through a boy's life to adulthood. It then culminates in with a great adventure. As with many of Lodge's works, Out of Shelter touches on the English Catholic themes and growing up in post-war England.

[Carlo Hublet · Rating 2 out of 5]

Je ne parviens jamais à être passionné par un roman de David Lodge, encore ici je me suis souvent ennuyé

[Alistair Edwards · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like David Lodge. So I noticed this book when I saw it in a bag on its way to the charity shop. I checked my shelves and I did not have a copy, so perhaps I had not read it. What I did not do is to check Goodreads, and so I set off reading it - and soon realized that I had read it. I thought then that I also remembered reviewing it, so any review I would write now would be in danger of being a bit repetitive. However, it seems that I did not write a review.

An advantage of having a poor memory is that I can read a book for a second time as if it were new (you might even say 'novel'). So, while I remembered the broad outline of the story, most of the details were quite fresh.

As I say, I like Lodge, but this book was particularly relevant to me as I could identify with the main character. He is a bit older than me, having been born before World War II, but I can remember some of the aspects of being brought up in post-war Britain. Also, some of his experience of adolescent angst is probably relevant to all teenaged boys.

One feature of the book is its unusual punctuation. Lodge does not use conventional quotation marks to delimit dialogue. Rather, a line starting with a dash is spoken. The end of the speech is not marked. For the most part this is not ambiguous because the non-speech segment is usually something like 'said David'. I am aware that conventional punctuation has limitations, but I am not sure why Lodge chose this alternative; there were times when I found myself having to re-read a line to work out where the speech ended and the narrative re-started.

Not a spoiler, but there was a bit of a twist at the end.

I've read it twice, so of course I would recommend it.

[Juan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I probably got this one in a book swap, led by the idea of Lodge as a generally funny author, sometimes in an academic environment.
A good number of pages into this book I recalled it was also the same David Lodge that wrote decidedly unfunny and rambling novels in above mentioned academic environment. This is his fourth novel, and it has many autobiographic elements, mentioned in the afterword: David Lodge was sixteen in the early 50s, and when to Heidelberg to visit a relative, staying there for some time.
There's not much more to it. It's a growing pains history, the history of the author and main character becoming adults through political, historical, religious and also sexual explorations in "the summer of their lives". There's no real tension, just well written and threaded scenes, but it's definitely not the kind of genre I usually look for, and, though probably representative of the author, not of the facet of the author I really like.
It's got its good parts, of course: confronting how the British fared after the war, compared with the country that helped them (US) and the one they defeated (Germany); a comparison of attitudes towards life of all of them. The book is well- rounded: it starts with the bombing of London, and end with fireworks, ironically closing the circle. After all, a good writer. Only not a good match for me.

[Andrew Shaw · Rating 4 out of 5]

I approached this in a spirit of trepidation. I love David Lodge, but as this was the only novel of his that I hadn’t read I was worried that, as one of his less well regarded books, this might not be the best one to end on. I needn’t have worried though, it’s a fantastic read. This is Lodge at his most straight, a coming of age story relayed a single narrator. It may lack the dry humour of his later, campus novels but it more than makes up for it with its honest and thought provoking delineation of the contradictions of post war European life. The protagonist, Timothy Young, leaves behind the grey austerity of post war London for Heidelberg. There, he finds a sumptuous world of parties, good food and bon homie, yet can’t rid himself of the feeling that this is something of a facade, a coterie of ex-pats and ex-soldiers living an unrealistic life on top of a people weighed down by the twin horrors of both defeat and war guilt. Lodge is as fluid as ever here. He has incredible talent for producing intelligent, fluent prose that feels effortless to read. Out of the Shelter is by no means his greatest novel, but it’s a great one by anyone’s standards.

[Luis Ferrao · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5 estrelas.

Livro na linha da escrita de David Lodge. Neste caso a história passa-se nas décadas de 40 e 50 do século XX.

Conta a história de Timothy e sua família inglesa que passaram a segunda metade da segunda guerra mundial em Londres sofrendo com as provações resultantes dos bombardeamentos alemães.

Evolui depois para o início do período de paz com a derrota da Alemanha Nazi, tendo Timothy a oportunidade de se juntar, durante umas férias escolares, à irmã entretanto estacionada na Alemanha ao serviço do exército americano.

Perspectiva interessante sobre o período que se seguiu ao pós guerra com a ascendência dos EUA. Não chegando a ser um choque cultural a história conta, de uma maneira entretida e despretensiosa, um certo conflito de ideologias e modos de (sobre)viver entre os derrotados - alemães - e os vencedores - ingleses e americanos - sendo que são detalhados ao longo do livro, e entre estes últimos, umas quantas idiossincrasias.

Livro entretido e de leitura fácil. Não é, de longe, uma obra prima. Segue o padrão dos livros do autor. Escrita fácil, que não é difícil de acompanhar e cujas páginas vão passando a bom ritmo

[Pavuluzza Gnucca · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Out of the shelter" è un libro di formazione sul passaggio dall'adolescenza all'età adulta di Timothy, un ragazzo che lascia una Londra molto colpita dal secondo conflitto mondiale, in cui "austerità" è la parola d'ordine della vita quotidiana, per avventurarsi in una vacanza nella Germania liberata, all'insegna di uno stile di vita leggero, fatto di consumi, di feste e di piaceri come quello che gli espatriati conducono al servizio delle forze statunitensi che operano ancora nei territori liberati all'inizio degli anni Cinquanta.
Il libro ha uno stampo realista, ma i personaggi sono piatti, senza guizzi, tanto che sembrano sottendere più ad un intento "didattico" che letterario. Il libro è a tratti noioso, ma comunque interessante da leggere se si è interessati ad avere un ritratto di quello che erano la Gran Bretagna e la Germania nelle fasi finali del conflitto e nell'immediato dopoguerra. Tutto è letto attraverso gli occhi di un adolescente, appesantito però da una narrazione in terza persona.

[Trevor P. Kwain · Rating 4 out of 5]

I did not know what to expect when I picked up Out of Shelter and little did I know about David Lodge. The novel is a simple, curious coming-of-age story about a sixteen-year-old boy we would now define as belonging to the "Silent Generation". It talks about England, Germany and the US in the years immediately after the war, and it is a refreshing look at topics that we heard or read so many times. The difference here is that it is a story built around human beings and not around historical events. The settings is a mere background, and the characters' opinions and voices are what counts. Funny, serious, sad and thoughtful at different points throughout the story, this novel is not about the ending but about the journey. A human journey of discovery, about me and you, about us and them. Liked it very much.

[Socrate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Una dintre primele sale amintiri - dacă nu chiar prima - era cea a mamei sale urcate pe un scăunel, în bucătărie, şi stivuind conserve cu mîncare în dulăpiorul suspendat. Alte conserve stăteau pe masă: compot de ananas, de piersici, de minole - îţi dădeai seama după desenele de pe ele. O întrebă:
– De ce ne trebuie toate conservele astea?
Soarele îşi trimitea razele prin fereastra bucătăriei, ce apărea şi dispărea după cum capul femeii intra sau nu în cadrul ei şi, cu toate că băiatul ţinea ochii mijiţi din pricina luminii şi nu-i putea vedea cu claritate chipul, îşi amintea cum l-a privit ea o perioadă care lui i s-a părut destul de lungă, după care i-a zis:
– Pentru că e război, dragule.
– Ce-i ăla război? a întrebat băiatul.
Dar nu şi-a amintit niciodată ce i-a răspuns ea.

[Nigel · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very autobiographical novel, it tells the story of Timothy from being a young child during the blitz in London during WWII through to being a naive teenager visiting his sister in Heidelberg, 5 years after the end of the war. It describes life and attitudes in Britain during and after the war with what was going on in American controlled Germany where, for the Americans at least, there were no shortages and life was fun. A well written novel that is an enjoyable read.

[Todd · Rating 4 out of 5]

A sweet — sometimes bittersweet — bildungsroman of an English teen visiting his sister at an American base after WWII. The lessons are both small (groping towards sex) and large (the wonder and politics of a new world) but never presented less than humanely and empathetically.

If the final result is slight, that doesn’t make it any less enjoyable. Lodge is a fine writer and what he has to say still echoes in a world 70 years later. Technology changes, but psychology doesn’t.

[Patricia Roman-Morar · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have mixed feelings about this book. It started out promising, following by many pages when I just wanted to put the book on the shelf. On the other hand, the second part of the book was good and I loved the last part. The last 30 pages were amazing. Overall it's a book that you need to have patience with. It blooms up like a flower and you get to love eventually.

[Edward Whittle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved every word. I have read a few by Lodge, first hooked by “nice work”, and though a very different subject the style is still familiar and the storyline enthralling. Having spent sometime in Germany in my late teens, i identified with Timothy’s fear of what Germans were really like, and surprise at the country’s beauty. Overall I would thoroughly recommend this book

[Pete Papagiannis · Rating 3 out of 5]

The least humorous David Lodge I've read so far but still a delight and especially since it takes place in one of the greats (cities). This read really had me H4H - Homesick 4 Heidelberg! We miss it a lot! "Wherever you stood, Heidelberg composed itself effortlessly into a picture"

And

"Heidelberg is full of people who don't want to go home". Amen, bruder.

[Inês Sousa Jesus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gostei mesmo muito. O tipo de escrita, falsamente fácil e leve do David Lodge, numa história tão bem contada - e tão autobiográfica.
Vemos o mundo pelo olhos do Timothy, a guerra enquanto criança, a morte, a escola, o pós-guerra enquanto adolescente, a viagem numa partida à descoberta - da Europa, da adolescência, de si mesmo.
Gostei mesmo muito.

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was good. It seemed old fashioned, and sure it enough it is a reissue of an early book. Anyway, still good. A unique setting of an English schoolboy and his older sister among the Americans occupying Germany

[Artie LeBlanc · Rating 4 out of 5]

An enjoyable and nostalgic look at straitened England from the war to the start of the 50s - and the electric shock to an inexperienced youth, when he encountered Abroad, Adulthood, and hedonism, all in one tumultuous holiday.

One of the less well known
N novels by David Lodge. Recommended.

[Julia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great coming of age tale set in post-war allied-occupied Germany.

[Mr Geoffrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Evocative

Those of us born during or shortly after WW2 will recognise the world that Timothy inhabits. Very enjoyable and well written novel by a master of his craft.

[Gareth Evans · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well-written coming of age novel which artfully contrasts early 50s austerity Britain with opulent America. Enjoyable

[Sílvia Bernardino · Rating 3 out of 5]

Escrito em 1970, retrata (de forma autobiográfica) a viagem marcante no pós 2a Guerra Mundial do jovem Timothy e a sua passagem da infância para a vida adulta.

[Tito Bisoñé · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excelente! Es la primer novela que leo de Lodge. Una lectura amena y divertida.