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There's No Home
'An unqualified masterpiece ... as acute a study of the psychology of war as fiction offers us' Guardian
It's 1943. The allied invasion of Sicily. In a lull in the fighting, an exhausted British battalion marches into the searing summer heat of Catania, to be greeted by the women, children and old men emerging form the bomb shelters. Yearning for some semblance of domestic life, the men begin to fill the roles left by absent husbands and fathers. Unlikely relationships form, tender, exploitative even cruel, but all shaped by the exigencies of war.
Centred around a love story, between Graziela, a young mother, and Sergeant Craddock, whose rough attempts at seduction are vindicated by his sympathy and the care he shows for her malnourished child, There's No Home offers an unerringly humane and authentic portrayal of the emotional impact of war.
It's 1943. The allied invasion of Sicily. In a lull in the fighting, an exhausted British battalion marches into the searing summer heat of Catania, to be greeted by the women, children and old men emerging form the bomb shelters. Yearning for some semblance of domestic life, the men begin to fill the roles left by absent husbands and fathers. Unlikely relationships form, tender, exploitative even cruel, but all shaped by the exigencies of war.
Centred around a love story, between Graziela, a young mother, and Sergeant Craddock, whose rough attempts at seduction are vindicated by his sympathy and the care he shows for her malnourished child, There's No Home offers an unerringly humane and authentic portrayal of the emotional impact of war.
167 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1950
About the author
Alexander Baron
105 books42 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
Alexander Baron (4 December 1917 – 6 December 1999) was a British author and screenwriter. He is best known for his highly acclaimed novel about D-Day entitled From the City from the Plough (1948) and his London novel The Lowlife (1963). His father was Barnet Bernstein, a Polish-Jewish immigrant to Britain who settled in the East End of London in 1908 and later worked as a furrier. Alexander Baron was born in Maidenhead and raised in the Hackney district of London. He attended Hackney Downs School. During the 1930s, with his schoolfriend Ted Willis, Baron was a leading activist and organiser of the Labour League of Youth (at that time aligned with the Communist Party), campaigning against the fascists in the streets of the East End. Baron became increasingly disillusioned with far left politics as he spoke to International Brigade fighters returning from the Spanish Civil War, and finally broke with the communists after the Hitler–Stalin Pact of August 1939.
Baron served in the Pioneer Corps of the British Army during World War II, experiencing fierce fighting in the Italian campaign, Normandy and in Northern France and Belgium. As a sapper, he was among the first Allied troops to be landed in Sicily, Italy and on D-Day. He used his wartime experiences as the basis for his three best-selling war novels. After the war he became assistant editor of Tribune before publishing his first novel From the City from the Plough (1948). At this time, at the behest of his publisher Jonathan Cape, he also changed his name from Bernstein to Baron.
Baron's personal papers are held in the archives of the University of Reading. His wartime letters and unpublished memoirs were used by the historian Sean Longden for his book To the Victor the Spoils, a social history of the British Army between D Day and VE Day.[3] Baron has also been the subject of essays by Iain Sinclair and Ken Worpole.
As well as continuing to write novels, in the 1950s Baron wrote screenplays for Hollywood, and by the 1960s he had become a regular writer on BBC's Play for Today, for drama serials like Poldark and A Horseman Riding By, and BBC classic adaptions including Jane Eyre, Sense And Sensibility, and Oliver Twist.
Alexander Baron (4 December 1917 – 6 December 1999) was a British author and screenwriter. He is best known for his highly acclaimed novel about D-Day entitled From the City from the Plough (1948) and his London novel The Lowlife (1963). His father was Barnet Bernstein, a Polish-Jewish immigrant to Britain who settled in the East End of London in 1908 and later worked as a furrier. Alexander Baron was born in Maidenhead and raised in the Hackney district of London. He attended Hackney Downs School. During the 1930s, with his schoolfriend Ted Willis, Baron was a leading activist and organiser of the Labour League of Youth (at that time aligned with the Communist Party), campaigning against the fascists in the streets of the East End. Baron became increasingly disillusioned with far left politics as he spoke to International Brigade fighters returning from the Spanish Civil War, and finally broke with the communists after the Hitler–Stalin Pact of August 1939.
Baron served in the Pioneer Corps of the British Army during World War II, experiencing fierce fighting in the Italian campaign, Normandy and in Northern France and Belgium. As a sapper, he was among the first Allied troops to be landed in Sicily, Italy and on D-Day. He used his wartime experiences as the basis for his three best-selling war novels. After the war he became assistant editor of Tribune before publishing his first novel From the City from the Plough (1948). At this time, at the behest of his publisher Jonathan Cape, he also changed his name from Bernstein to Baron.
Baron's personal papers are held in the archives of the University of Reading. His wartime letters and unpublished memoirs were used by the historian Sean Longden for his book To the Victor the Spoils, a social history of the British Army between D Day and VE Day.[3] Baron has also been the subject of essays by Iain Sinclair and Ken Worpole.
As well as continuing to write novels, in the 1950s Baron wrote screenplays for Hollywood, and by the 1960s he had become a regular writer on BBC's Play for Today, for drama serials like Poldark and A Horseman Riding By, and BBC classic adaptions including Jane Eyre, Sense And Sensibility, and Oliver Twist.
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March 2, 2016
This is a war book with a twist: there's no war in it. There's No Home details the aftermath of the Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943. A platoon of Tommies, under the nominal command of Captain Rumbold but kept in line by Sergeant Craddock, march into the town of Catania and remain there for some weeks awaiting further orders. The book describes multiple interactions between the British soldiers and the Italian natives, but particularly the blossoming romance between Craddock and Graziella, a Sicilian woman whose husband is missing in action.
Baron is a fine, sensitive writer. His book is written with great care and precision and, dare I say it, he seems to have a lady novelist's eye for detail (there are some wonderful descriptions of the hot, sultry weather and the Italian countryside). The dialogue between the soldiers, of which there could have been more, is rendered exquisitely but I thought that between Craddock and Graziella seemed rather stilted, perhaps because they are supposed to be speaking in Italian, not English. The novel is well structured and although it tells of a lull in the fighting there are sufficient dramatic flare-ups to keep the reader entertained. That said, I did feel that some of the long scenes between Craddock and Graziella dragged and wanted to hear more from the other characters, who in many ways were more engaging (Baron kills off a potentially very interesting minor figure in the opening chapters!).
There's No Home is by no means perfect but as my first contact with Baron's work I was very impressed. This is a true, honest and thoughtful account of an interlude in the Italian campaign during WWII written from the perspective of an ordinary soldier who was actually there. I now very much look forward to reading the same author's From the City, From the Plough, which I confidently expect will be a superior novel.
Baron is a fine, sensitive writer. His book is written with great care and precision and, dare I say it, he seems to have a lady novelist's eye for detail (there are some wonderful descriptions of the hot, sultry weather and the Italian countryside). The dialogue between the soldiers, of which there could have been more, is rendered exquisitely but I thought that between Craddock and Graziella seemed rather stilted, perhaps because they are supposed to be speaking in Italian, not English. The novel is well structured and although it tells of a lull in the fighting there are sufficient dramatic flare-ups to keep the reader entertained. That said, I did feel that some of the long scenes between Craddock and Graziella dragged and wanted to hear more from the other characters, who in many ways were more engaging (Baron kills off a potentially very interesting minor figure in the opening chapters!).
There's No Home is by no means perfect but as my first contact with Baron's work I was very impressed. This is a true, honest and thoughtful account of an interlude in the Italian campaign during WWII written from the perspective of an ordinary soldier who was actually there. I now very much look forward to reading the same author's From the City, From the Plough, which I confidently expect will be a superior novel.
May 25, 2021
Although I didn't love it as I did my two previous experiences of Alexander Baron's writing - From the City, From the Plough and The Human Kind - it is fair to say that I still found There's No Home to be very fulfilling. It didn't resonate as deeply with me as those other two books, but it was still a well-crafted novel aching with humanity.
The best summary of the novel actually comes from Baron himself in the very first paragraph of the first chapter:
"This is not a story of war but of one of those brief interludes in war when the almost-forgotten rhythms of normal living are permitted to emerge again; and when it seeps back into the consciousness of human beings - painfully, sometimes heartbreakingly - that they are, after all, human." (pg. 1)
You see, Baron's second war novel is not really a war novel. There is no combat (though, to be fair, there would be none in The Human Kind three years later either) and it is more about human relationships. There is a saying I remember hearing somewhere about how if you want to provide conflict and a character study in a novel, then 'throw some characters together and apply heat'. That is essentially what Baron does here: the British soldiers are billeted briefly in a Sicilian town at the end of their invasion of the island in 1943. They interact with the Italian women (and to a lesser extent, the Italian children and old men); the 'heat' applied is the war itself, and how that gloomy presence colours and overshadows all their actions.
It is hard to summarise and review exactly what it is Baron does, but as always it is fascinating to watch his characters, even when they are doing something as mundane as eating dinner. Baron is a keen observer of human behaviour and has the remarkable knack of being able to fully realise a character you care about in just one or two lines. The main plot (insofar as there is one; the novel is more of a character study than a plot-driven story) is about the love affair between Craddock and Graziella (and this is nowhere near as cliché as you might be thinking) but the other sub-plots also carry emotional impact. I found Nella's story to be especially heartbreaking, particularly as it began in such innocence.
Above all, it is Baron's perceptiveness and maturity in writing about sexual politics during the war which is the main strength of There's No Home. Baron has always been bravely frank about this sort of thing (see some of the vignettes in The Human Kind, for example) and There's No Home is a great illustration of his willingness to provide an unfiltered account of the reality of war and of life. In From the City, From the Plough, he offered an utterly realistic depiction of combat in war; in There's No Home, he offers a similarly realistic rendering of sex and love in war. It is not a bawdy or a crude novel; it just documents with courageous frankness how people try to hold onto their humanity in such peculiar circumstances. It is this unsentimental approach to all the consequences of war which allows John L. Williams, in his great Afterword, to correctly state that the book is "about the horror of war", even though this initially seems nonsensical as it "takes place almost entirely on one small street in a Sicilian town, a long way from the front line" (pg. 270).
But even though I recognise the achievement of There's No Home, I must confess that I did find it hard to engage with on occasion. It is a very insular novel, concerned more with emotions and thoughts and feeling rather than external stimuli. This is fine, of course, and fully suited to what the novel is trying to achieve, but it is less to my tastes and means you can lose your way on occasion. Baron's prose is also rather more dense than I had come to appreciate in the other two of his works I have so far read. In my past reviews, I've made no secret of my preference for sparser prose, and there was a spare, rugged yet refined prose which I enjoyed in From the City, From the Plough and The Human Kind. But Baron does not employ this style in There's No Home (though, to be fair, it is not the kind of story that suits it) and drops it in favour of a more lyrical style that occasionally reminded me of Dickens. It is a perfectly respectable style of prose, and many readers will prefer it, but it is not always to my liking and not what I expected after my previous experiences of Baron. Of course, these are my own personal experiences from reading the novel and it seems rather churlish of me to criticise Baron's style when a different style (i.e. one closer to From the City, From the Plough) would not have been able to tell the story. It's just that Baron's change of pace meant that I didn't devour the book; I didn't love it as I did his previous books.
It should be stressed here that my only objections (small as they are) are stylistic, not of the book's substance, and even then I admit they are rather unreasonable. The novel is great, a well-written character study with an aura of profound intimacy that Baron has always excelled at. It might not have been everything I expected, and I may not have appreciated it whilst reading it as much as I should have, but it is still a fine work of art.
The best summary of the novel actually comes from Baron himself in the very first paragraph of the first chapter:
"This is not a story of war but of one of those brief interludes in war when the almost-forgotten rhythms of normal living are permitted to emerge again; and when it seeps back into the consciousness of human beings - painfully, sometimes heartbreakingly - that they are, after all, human." (pg. 1)
You see, Baron's second war novel is not really a war novel. There is no combat (though, to be fair, there would be none in The Human Kind three years later either) and it is more about human relationships. There is a saying I remember hearing somewhere about how if you want to provide conflict and a character study in a novel, then 'throw some characters together and apply heat'. That is essentially what Baron does here: the British soldiers are billeted briefly in a Sicilian town at the end of their invasion of the island in 1943. They interact with the Italian women (and to a lesser extent, the Italian children and old men); the 'heat' applied is the war itself, and how that gloomy presence colours and overshadows all their actions.
It is hard to summarise and review exactly what it is Baron does, but as always it is fascinating to watch his characters, even when they are doing something as mundane as eating dinner. Baron is a keen observer of human behaviour and has the remarkable knack of being able to fully realise a character you care about in just one or two lines. The main plot (insofar as there is one; the novel is more of a character study than a plot-driven story) is about the love affair between Craddock and Graziella (and this is nowhere near as cliché as you might be thinking) but the other sub-plots also carry emotional impact. I found Nella's story to be especially heartbreaking, particularly as it began in such innocence.
Above all, it is Baron's perceptiveness and maturity in writing about sexual politics during the war which is the main strength of There's No Home. Baron has always been bravely frank about this sort of thing (see some of the vignettes in The Human Kind, for example) and There's No Home is a great illustration of his willingness to provide an unfiltered account of the reality of war and of life. In From the City, From the Plough, he offered an utterly realistic depiction of combat in war; in There's No Home, he offers a similarly realistic rendering of sex and love in war. It is not a bawdy or a crude novel; it just documents with courageous frankness how people try to hold onto their humanity in such peculiar circumstances. It is this unsentimental approach to all the consequences of war which allows John L. Williams, in his great Afterword, to correctly state that the book is "about the horror of war", even though this initially seems nonsensical as it "takes place almost entirely on one small street in a Sicilian town, a long way from the front line" (pg. 270).
But even though I recognise the achievement of There's No Home, I must confess that I did find it hard to engage with on occasion. It is a very insular novel, concerned more with emotions and thoughts and feeling rather than external stimuli. This is fine, of course, and fully suited to what the novel is trying to achieve, but it is less to my tastes and means you can lose your way on occasion. Baron's prose is also rather more dense than I had come to appreciate in the other two of his works I have so far read. In my past reviews, I've made no secret of my preference for sparser prose, and there was a spare, rugged yet refined prose which I enjoyed in From the City, From the Plough and The Human Kind. But Baron does not employ this style in There's No Home (though, to be fair, it is not the kind of story that suits it) and drops it in favour of a more lyrical style that occasionally reminded me of Dickens. It is a perfectly respectable style of prose, and many readers will prefer it, but it is not always to my liking and not what I expected after my previous experiences of Baron. Of course, these are my own personal experiences from reading the novel and it seems rather churlish of me to criticise Baron's style when a different style (i.e. one closer to From the City, From the Plough) would not have been able to tell the story. It's just that Baron's change of pace meant that I didn't devour the book; I didn't love it as I did his previous books.
It should be stressed here that my only objections (small as they are) are stylistic, not of the book's substance, and even then I admit they are rather unreasonable. The novel is great, a well-written character study with an aura of profound intimacy that Baron has always excelled at. It might not have been everything I expected, and I may not have appreciated it whilst reading it as much as I should have, but it is still a fine work of art.
January 13, 2023
An extraordinary war story - without a single shot fired.
April 21, 2024
Sicily, 1943. A company of British soldiers, serving with the Eighth Army, has arrived in Catania, an ancient port that sits at the foot of Mt Etna. A full size army company would have numbered around 150 men, but this unit is much reduced in size. Although they have experienced battle in North Africa, by the time they get to Sicily, the war has moved on, as the Germans are engaged in a fighting retreat towards the Straits of Messina, where they will hope to cross – with as many men and as much materiel as possible – to the mainland. The Italian army is no longer a viable force,and it would officially surrender in September.
Screen Shot 2024-04-10 at 19.40.23
In Alexander Baron’s book – part of a trilogy based on his own war service – the British soldiers are not engaged directly with the enemy. Instead, they arrive in Catania and are assigned billets in the Via Martiri. For both themselves and the residents, it is something of a shock:
“They studied each other with a hostile curiosity. Each group looked the same to the other: filthy, exhausted, more animal than human, the soldiers swaying over their rifles, the civilians at bay before their houses. Each was looking at ‘the enemy’. There across the road (on which ever side one stood)were the people responsible for these last three weeks of suffering. The roadway was wide-miles wide, it seemed at this moment-sunlit and empty. A baby squalled and the children began to creep out from amongst their elders. The people looked at their children with a dullness that was worse than a visible agony. The distress that came into the soldiers eyes was the first human feeling they had betrayed since their arrival. The children all had the same appearance; heads that seemed monstrous on their shrunken bodies; big, appealing eyes; twisted, scabby little legs; and flesh whose colour, beneath the dirt, was a deathly toadstool whiteness.”
As in most of the rest of Catania, there are (with a couple of exceptions) no men in the Via Martiri. All are gone for soldiers. Many are now dead, and the rest are prisoners of the Allies. This creates an unusual problem for the officer in command of the company, Captain Rumbold. He is puzzled when, after a few days, many of his men are unofficially ‘adopted by various women in the street. Publicly, he says nothing, but he views his clerk as something of a confessor: To Piggott, however, who was his confidant as well as his clerk, he was indignantly eloquent.
“Would you have believed it? Chaps out of decent homes! You’d have thought wild horses wouldn’t have dragged them into the kind of pigsties that these people live in. Dark, dirty, smelly, bloody holes – that’s all they are – holes in the wall-full of flies and bugs and fleas. People in rags, scratching themselves day and night, look as if they’ve never had a bath in their lives! I can’t imagine what’s got into the chaps.”
One such soldier is Sergeant Joe Craddock. He has a wife and young child at home but, as the book’s title ominously suggests, ‘home’ has become a foreign concept for many men. They are where they are, with little or no expectation of being reconciled with their families. All they can do is adapt to what the ‘here and now’ offers. In Craddock’s case this takes the shape of a beautiful woman called Graziella. Her husband has gone away to fight, and she has no idea if he is living or dead. After a brief tussle with her conscience, she enthusiastically embraces – in every sense of the word – what Craddock has to offer.
Many of the company have been ‘adopted’ by women in the street. It is a symbiotic process; the men have their washing done, get a break from the abrasive all male life in the billet; not all of the men are claiming conjugal rights, but they can provide basic army rations, and their pay can buy luxuries from the shops and market stalls gradually re-opening after the fighting which caused the departure of the Germans. Inevitably the orders eventually come for the company to move out, and for Graziella and Craddock this is traumatic. She begs him to stay, but the thought of desertion appalls him.
As William Tecumseh Sherman once said, “War is all hell, boys”, but despite the privations and the real chance of serious injury or death, for many men, the army provides a structure, imposes boundaries, and obviates the need to make decisions or wrestle with moral problems. As the weeks of casual life end and the company prepares to move on, the army reasserts itself:
“Pride returned at the sight of the company forming up, the shuffling ranks closing into a neat, solid block of khaki that filled the whole length of the street; the straight lines of helmets swathed in dun sacking, the straight lines of rifles, the straight lines of packs, the straight lines of red faces. It was a single organism into which all individualities and all worries vanished, self sufficient and aloof from the untidy throng of civilians who surged around it as a tall ship is from the sea through which it cleaves.”
Baron’s writing is immensely powerful, and his understanding of fighting men is deep and thorough. In another time and place, he might have been a poet. As the company boards the train taking them who knows where, it is the end of something for the people of the Via Martiri.
“The train gathered speed and passed round the bend. Now there was only the blank end of the rear truck. Now it was gone. The sun’s glare, pitiless, blanched the blue sky, glittered on the deep blue sea, reflected, dazzling, from the walls of the tumbled white houses and drew an oven heat from the bleached pavements. The last tremor died from the rails. Now there was no sound in the blinding white sunlight; no sound but the weeping of women.”
First published in 1950, There’s No Home is republished by The Imperial War Museums, and is available now.
Screen Shot 2024-04-10 at 19.40.23
In Alexander Baron’s book – part of a trilogy based on his own war service – the British soldiers are not engaged directly with the enemy. Instead, they arrive in Catania and are assigned billets in the Via Martiri. For both themselves and the residents, it is something of a shock:
“They studied each other with a hostile curiosity. Each group looked the same to the other: filthy, exhausted, more animal than human, the soldiers swaying over their rifles, the civilians at bay before their houses. Each was looking at ‘the enemy’. There across the road (on which ever side one stood)were the people responsible for these last three weeks of suffering. The roadway was wide-miles wide, it seemed at this moment-sunlit and empty. A baby squalled and the children began to creep out from amongst their elders. The people looked at their children with a dullness that was worse than a visible agony. The distress that came into the soldiers eyes was the first human feeling they had betrayed since their arrival. The children all had the same appearance; heads that seemed monstrous on their shrunken bodies; big, appealing eyes; twisted, scabby little legs; and flesh whose colour, beneath the dirt, was a deathly toadstool whiteness.”
As in most of the rest of Catania, there are (with a couple of exceptions) no men in the Via Martiri. All are gone for soldiers. Many are now dead, and the rest are prisoners of the Allies. This creates an unusual problem for the officer in command of the company, Captain Rumbold. He is puzzled when, after a few days, many of his men are unofficially ‘adopted by various women in the street. Publicly, he says nothing, but he views his clerk as something of a confessor: To Piggott, however, who was his confidant as well as his clerk, he was indignantly eloquent.
“Would you have believed it? Chaps out of decent homes! You’d have thought wild horses wouldn’t have dragged them into the kind of pigsties that these people live in. Dark, dirty, smelly, bloody holes – that’s all they are – holes in the wall-full of flies and bugs and fleas. People in rags, scratching themselves day and night, look as if they’ve never had a bath in their lives! I can’t imagine what’s got into the chaps.”
One such soldier is Sergeant Joe Craddock. He has a wife and young child at home but, as the book’s title ominously suggests, ‘home’ has become a foreign concept for many men. They are where they are, with little or no expectation of being reconciled with their families. All they can do is adapt to what the ‘here and now’ offers. In Craddock’s case this takes the shape of a beautiful woman called Graziella. Her husband has gone away to fight, and she has no idea if he is living or dead. After a brief tussle with her conscience, she enthusiastically embraces – in every sense of the word – what Craddock has to offer.
Many of the company have been ‘adopted’ by women in the street. It is a symbiotic process; the men have their washing done, get a break from the abrasive all male life in the billet; not all of the men are claiming conjugal rights, but they can provide basic army rations, and their pay can buy luxuries from the shops and market stalls gradually re-opening after the fighting which caused the departure of the Germans. Inevitably the orders eventually come for the company to move out, and for Graziella and Craddock this is traumatic. She begs him to stay, but the thought of desertion appalls him.
As William Tecumseh Sherman once said, “War is all hell, boys”, but despite the privations and the real chance of serious injury or death, for many men, the army provides a structure, imposes boundaries, and obviates the need to make decisions or wrestle with moral problems. As the weeks of casual life end and the company prepares to move on, the army reasserts itself:
“Pride returned at the sight of the company forming up, the shuffling ranks closing into a neat, solid block of khaki that filled the whole length of the street; the straight lines of helmets swathed in dun sacking, the straight lines of rifles, the straight lines of packs, the straight lines of red faces. It was a single organism into which all individualities and all worries vanished, self sufficient and aloof from the untidy throng of civilians who surged around it as a tall ship is from the sea through which it cleaves.”
Baron’s writing is immensely powerful, and his understanding of fighting men is deep and thorough. In another time and place, he might have been a poet. As the company boards the train taking them who knows where, it is the end of something for the people of the Via Martiri.
“The train gathered speed and passed round the bend. Now there was only the blank end of the rear truck. Now it was gone. The sun’s glare, pitiless, blanched the blue sky, glittered on the deep blue sea, reflected, dazzling, from the walls of the tumbled white houses and drew an oven heat from the bleached pavements. The last tremor died from the rails. Now there was no sound in the blinding white sunlight; no sound but the weeping of women.”
First published in 1950, There’s No Home is republished by The Imperial War Museums, and is available now.
November 12, 2022
What an intriguing book. Published in 1950, it recounts a British platoon’s arrival in Catania, Sicily, after an awful bloody victory at The Plimosole Bridge, just to the south of the city. The men arrive in the town shattered and exhausted and are told they are to stay in the town til further notice. They settle into a life in limbo there, and the relationships, the descriptions of the women, the food, the suffering and humour are poignantly explored. I found this book while I was staying in Catania and after learning the story of my uncle’s death at that very bridge where so many British and Italian lives were lost. Reading this book was a powerful personal experience for me, as here was an author who had fought in the whole Sicilian invasion, participated in that battle, and he was writing about the men who had carried on after my poor uncle lost his life. The book is incredible. The sensitivity towards the women who suffer equally in wartime is astonishing for a 1950s novel. This is a war novel with no war action. It depicts life in the town with its agonising losses, it’s exuberance in feasting, it’s intrigue of spying and betrayal, and of course there is love! The afterword by John L Williams says it clearly… “Baron has fashioned a novel that is at once masculine and feminine, a war story and a love story, an affirmation of the human spirit, and a tragedy: in short, a book about the whole of human life.” This book is a must read for anyone interested in the human consequences of war.
April 20, 2024
There's no home is set in Sicily during the invasion of 1943, but not a war story like most are. Baron tells us about a British battalion who arrives in Catania, it being like many places at that time devastated by the bombings of war, most men away fighting the same war. But the soldiers have enough of this endless walking, being ready to shoot, fight...they want some feeling of being home, a good meal and having their families around them. What they find are the left behind women, some with their children, who are skinny, sad and without hope looking to feel like they are home again, and can prepare a meal... In the story these two sides come together and besides showing differences in cultures, behaviour, ... we also get to see that we also have same desires. The soldiers manage.to find a kind of home during the war, but do they in the end really have a place which they can call home?
Even though the story wasn't long (which I normally don't like), it was perfect for what was told in this story, because soon the life of everybody had to change again. Newly created situations and homes left behind. I liked the characters a lot in the story and the smooth, calm but at the same time vibrant way of writing.
Even though the story wasn't long (which I normally don't like), it was perfect for what was told in this story, because soon the life of everybody had to change again. Newly created situations and homes left behind. I liked the characters a lot in the story and the smooth, calm but at the same time vibrant way of writing.
April 17, 2024
As someone with a big interest in all things World War II, this read peaked my interest straight away.
It's a War book, but a little different than most as there's no actual War in it. Here we read of the aftermath of the Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943.
It's quite a heart-wrenching read, as we find out about the people left behind in the wake and absolute devastation that War leaves behind.
It's the story of a group of British Soldiers who end up in the town of Catania and remain for several weeks,being looked after by the Women of the town, so it's a book mainly focused on those Women.
It's not really a story of War, but rather of the Human condition, and of relationships between people who would likely have never met, but for War.
It's very well written, with good characters and development.
I read this in two sittings.
4 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 's from me.
It's a War book, but a little different than most as there's no actual War in it. Here we read of the aftermath of the Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943.
It's quite a heart-wrenching read, as we find out about the people left behind in the wake and absolute devastation that War leaves behind.
It's the story of a group of British Soldiers who end up in the town of Catania and remain for several weeks,being looked after by the Women of the town, so it's a book mainly focused on those Women.
It's not really a story of War, but rather of the Human condition, and of relationships between people who would likely have never met, but for War.
It's very well written, with good characters and development.
I read this in two sittings.
4 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 's from me.
August 5, 2025
The weakest of his war trilogy - probably more of a 3.5. It’s great that Alexander Baron seems to be going through something of a renaissance. A war story without war, exploring the complexities of attachment, slightly spoilt by the cockney accents which, while no doubt authentic at the time, have become “strike a light” parody today.
April 26, 2023
Excellent writing. A really moving account of war.
September 18, 2024
4 stars on the strength of his opening description of the heat, exhaustion etc. story wasn’t as compelling as his D day account in my opinion.
October 5, 2024
There is no pace at all in the storyline.
July 8, 2025
A well-written, but limited novel, about a British battalion stationed in a Sicilian town in WWII between battles.
August 10, 2025
Nobody writes a better novel of the Second World War than Baron
February 14, 2024
Well written & very emotional.
June 9, 2025
I enjoyed this very much, and while quite different in tone, it stands up well alongside Baron’s excellent From the City, From the Plough. Where that was a shocking and brutal account of the destruction of an infantry battalion in the battle of Normandy, this is a war novel with no war and follows a company of infantry who are resting and rebuilding after the Allied invasion of Sicily. As Baron himself puts it, “This is not a story of war but of one of those brief interludes in war when the almost-forgotten rhythms of normal living are permitted to emerge again; and when it seeps back into the consciousness of human beings painfully, sometimes heartbreakingly - that they are, after all, human.”
The war is pictured as an all-consuming reality, so as it recedes from view, normal life starts to be re-established. This is seen vividly in the tendency of many of the soldiers to not only shack up with local women but to genuinely start to settle down and act the part of husbands and fathers. At the same time, normal, non-frontline military life also starts to reassert itself, with all its discipline and order. These men are mostly citizen soldiers, so they had lives before the war as well as experience in uniform before going into battle. The combination of the military and the civilian results in an atmosphere of bizarre and often funny ambiguity and confusion. To quote Baron again: “A few miles away the armies were still engaged, but throughout this sprawling city thousands of people were bustling about, wiping away from their streets, their habitations and their own minds the traces of war as they might clean up the mess after a drunken party.” The image of the hungover party-goer is an apt one, as no one seems quite sure of what is going on or where they have found themselves and why.
While the war is absent in that there is no active fighting, at the same time, its presence is felt everywhere. And just occasionally, the war roars back into sharp focus when we encounter a German deserter, a booby trap, or increasingly towards the end as the army gears up to invade the Italian mainland. This means that the odd, funny and comforting atmosphere that descends on Catania as the soldiers settle in is also tinged with sadness and grief. The reader (and the protagonists) know that all too soon they will move on and that the war will draw them into its gaping maw once again.
I hope that the IWM continues to republish these classic, and largely out of print, novels - every one that I have read so far has been an absolute cracker.
The war is pictured as an all-consuming reality, so as it recedes from view, normal life starts to be re-established. This is seen vividly in the tendency of many of the soldiers to not only shack up with local women but to genuinely start to settle down and act the part of husbands and fathers. At the same time, normal, non-frontline military life also starts to reassert itself, with all its discipline and order. These men are mostly citizen soldiers, so they had lives before the war as well as experience in uniform before going into battle. The combination of the military and the civilian results in an atmosphere of bizarre and often funny ambiguity and confusion. To quote Baron again: “A few miles away the armies were still engaged, but throughout this sprawling city thousands of people were bustling about, wiping away from their streets, their habitations and their own minds the traces of war as they might clean up the mess after a drunken party.” The image of the hungover party-goer is an apt one, as no one seems quite sure of what is going on or where they have found themselves and why.
While the war is absent in that there is no active fighting, at the same time, its presence is felt everywhere. And just occasionally, the war roars back into sharp focus when we encounter a German deserter, a booby trap, or increasingly towards the end as the army gears up to invade the Italian mainland. This means that the odd, funny and comforting atmosphere that descends on Catania as the soldiers settle in is also tinged with sadness and grief. The reader (and the protagonists) know that all too soon they will move on and that the war will draw them into its gaping maw once again.
I hope that the IWM continues to republish these classic, and largely out of print, novels - every one that I have read so far has been an absolute cracker.
April 26, 2013
A total surprise! Alexander Baron was born in 1917 (died 1999) and was brought up in Hackney, East London. He wrote novels from the end of the 1940's to early 1960's. He seems to have disappeared to the reading public and books went out of print. He has now been "re-discovered" and titles are being re-published. "THere's No Home" (1950) can perhaps be
considered the final title of a trilogy of "war novels" but if so, going by this novel, they should not be put into the category of a "genre" novel. Baron was in the 8th Army and experience the horrific battle for Sicily. This novel holds us in a short interlude during the Second World War in 1943, when a small detachment of British troops finally arrive at the Sicilian city of Catania which has suffered immense bombing and bombarbment. Over the telling of the story we experience the days the troops spend there, the story emerging through a number of finely delineated characters and their interactions one with another, both through the soldiers and through a number of Sicilian characters. A truly fine, tender, moving and authentic piece of writing. Three cheers for small publisher (Sort Of Books) for bringing Alexander Baron back to us. (Other titles I will definitely read: King Dido (Publ. Five Leaves), The Lowlife (Publ. Black Spring Press)and others.
considered the final title of a trilogy of "war novels" but if so, going by this novel, they should not be put into the category of a "genre" novel. Baron was in the 8th Army and experience the horrific battle for Sicily. This novel holds us in a short interlude during the Second World War in 1943, when a small detachment of British troops finally arrive at the Sicilian city of Catania which has suffered immense bombing and bombarbment. Over the telling of the story we experience the days the troops spend there, the story emerging through a number of finely delineated characters and their interactions one with another, both through the soldiers and through a number of Sicilian characters. A truly fine, tender, moving and authentic piece of writing. Three cheers for small publisher (Sort Of Books) for bringing Alexander Baron back to us. (Other titles I will definitely read: King Dido (Publ. Five Leaves), The Lowlife (Publ. Black Spring Press)and others.
April 19, 2024
As someone who has a fascination with all things World Wars ll this was a really interesting and moving side to the War that is hardly spoken about.
It was really refreshing yet heart wrenching to read about the people left behind in the wake of the devastation the war had left in this small town in Sicily. Families torn apart, people left hungry and helpless yet in the midst of this mess friendships bloom, love is found and life seems to take on a somewhat ‘new normal’
I highly recommend this read to anyone who enjoys historical fiction, anyone who wants to read about wartime without all the bombing and destruction but still have the full effect of aftermath. It was a really authentic wartime read.
It was really refreshing yet heart wrenching to read about the people left behind in the wake of the devastation the war had left in this small town in Sicily. Families torn apart, people left hungry and helpless yet in the midst of this mess friendships bloom, love is found and life seems to take on a somewhat ‘new normal’
I highly recommend this read to anyone who enjoys historical fiction, anyone who wants to read about wartime without all the bombing and destruction but still have the full effect of aftermath. It was a really authentic wartime read.
September 6, 2012
Sicilian town occupied by British regiment, romance, no combat, Italian peasant women pov
April 27, 2016
Wartime changes the rules, creates strange bedfellows, and makes the unacceptable the norm. Good reading, with a view of a place & situation many of us never see.
Read
March 30, 2016Well written, a narrative about an English regiment in WW 2. The second in a series (followed by The Human Kind).
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