“Sensitive Storyteller” Chris Cleave On NPR
Rising on the Amazon charts on the strength of an interview on NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday is Chris Cleave’s Everyone Brave Is Forgiven (S&S; S&S Audio; OverDrive Sample).
The Library Reads pick, GalleyChatter hit, and Indie Next selection is currently #88 on Amazon’s Top 100 and is definitely headed for the best seller lists.
NPR’s Lynn Neary talks with Cleave about his own family’s WWII history, the Blitz in London and the Siege of Malta, and the pervasive racism of the era. Of his family he says:
“One of the bravest things that people in that generation did was to trust each other and was to trust themselves to fall in love. They fell in love sort of differently from the way we do. My real-life grandparents only met nine times before they were engaged. And so my grandmother’s engagement ring had these nine tiny stones on it, one for each time. And that was one of the bravest things they did. It wasn’t just that they were very stoical and that they endured so much. It was that they had faith in each other.”
The novel is receiving conflicting reviews. In the Washington Post, David L. Ulin, former editor of the Los Angeles Times, says the author has problems tackling the grave effects of war, “None of the characters here is truly changed, not at the deepest level, which gives the book something of a shopworn quality.” On the other hand, The Guardian says: “With Everyone Brave Is Forgiven Cleave cements his reputation as a skilful storyteller, and a sensitive chronicler of the interplay between the political and the personal.”