Blasted Things

An absorbing, beautifully written book that stays with you long after the reading is finished. The story centres on a very young nurse working in a field hospital in Flanders during the Great War. She sees, hears, smells and lives things that cannot help but stay with her forever, and affect the relationships she forms after the war is over. The story is darkly gripping, but has an appealing innocence too, along with an underlying tension throughout that keeps the reader engaged. All the characters are realistically drawn and make themselves visible to the reader - to my mind the mark of a very fine writer indeed.

On finishing a Lesley Glaister novel, I’m always surprised that she’s not usually spoken of in the same breath as some of our foremost British novelists. Not only can she plot a gripping story but her choice of language is always so apt, her characters so real and her narrative so memorable.
In ‘Blasted Things’ Glaister goes back to the early twentieth century to focus on the scars, both physical and mental, borne by those who have been caught up in the ceaseless death and destruction of the First World War. Between them Vincent and Clementine, the central characters in her novel, have experienced terrible loss: of lover; of identity; of place in the world. This suffering makes them vulnerable to rash decisions and misunderstandings which have fatal consequences.
From the outset, the reader feels for Clem. Having lost Powell, a Canadian surgeon and the love of her life in France where she served as a field auxiliary nurse, she returns home to marry her respectable doctor fiancé, Dennis. The latter is condescending, controlling and patronising – a product of his age, his old-fashioned ways perhaps exacerbated by the fact that he fought the war by working in a hospital ‘at home’. Constrained, with a baby she finds hard to love, she meets Vincent and, strangely, there is something about him of Powell that draws her to him.
Vincent, a former door to door salesman who rose to the position of sergeant in the army, is so physically damaged by the war that he wears a prosthetic mask covering one side of his face. Reading Clem as a soft touch, he accepts her offer of payment for his motorbike repair. After all, she caused the accident, didn’t she? Nevertheless, this is not the end of their financial association and the pair meet clandestinely on several occasions. Whilst it would be easy to make Vincent into a pantomime villain, Glaister gives us a much more nuanced portrayal of a man unravelling through no fault of his own. In 1920s England, he is an unwanted reminder of the damage caused by war.
This is a very moving novel. Glaister explores why vulnerable people tell themselves the stories they do. She reminds the reader of the constraints and constrictions women of all classes faced in the early twentieth century, seen in proprietorial terms even by those who love them. She writes of the aspirations that war kills and the corrosive secrets that damage the possibility of a bright future. Whilst many of the characters are flawed, there are no easy judgements to be made. At the end of the novel, whilst Clem’s paper boats may drift calmly away downstream, the reader understands that her future is unlikely to be so tranquil.
My thanks to NetGalley and Sandstone Press for a copy of this novel in exchange for a fair review.

Read all of Lesley Glaisters novel, loved them all, everyone so different.
This one is about the effects of WWI on different people. The horrors of hospitals on the front line, amputations, brief romances, death and despair.
How can people make a life after their experiences. Two such people are Clementine and Vincent, whose chance meeting leads to unforeseen events and tragedy. Clementine battles against the restrictions imposed on married women, whilst her suffragette sister-in-law relishes her freedom. Vincent is disfigured and will do anything to get the woman he is besotted with..
Lots of historical detail and good characterisation.

Thanks to netgalley for this book ~
It’s been a while since I’ve enjoyed a decent ww1 book. And here we are, at last! The story is believable, and the characters one can relate to. Especially due to the circumstances they face. The only thing I will criticise is that VADs weren’t allowed in Clearing Stations, I think there was only one incredibly rare situation where that happened. But the general rule was no VADs in a C.C.S. But hey, it’s fiction.
Anyway, I give this a 4 out of 5. A book worthy of the WW1 genre!

Blasted Things is another fabulous Lesley Glaister novel. She just keeps getting better and better - and every book is different and differently wonderful.

Others have outlined the story of Clem and Dennis, Powell and Vincent, not to mention Harri and Gwen and all the other beautifully delineated characters. There is passion and quiet love, sadness and joy, betrayal and fidelity. It's all here - the horror of war and death, of illusions and a kind of madness, of loss and love and fantasy, and of quiet home life that can seem tedious in comparison. The descriptions are immediate and powerful and give a great sense of time and place. The thoughts and feelings of Vincent at the end are powerfully done.

Can't recommend it enough.

Thank you!

Much underrated writer Lesley Glaister has set her most recent novel just after WWI.
Clem joins the VAD after her brother is killed in the war. Caught up in the horrors of work at a clearing station close to the Front Line, she has little time to dwell on her fiancé who has rebuffed her when she went against his wishes and volunteers overseas. Unexpectedly, she finds true love in the form of a Canadian Doctor at the station, but not for long.
Returning home, now married to the fiancé, she meets Vincent. He has suffered dreadful facial injuries and having served his country, now faces a future as an outcast. Both Clem and Vincent look for something in the other that neither can provide, and their desperation leads them dangerous measures.
Blasted Things is a moving study of the limited choices of a woman in a middle class, loveless marriage to an emotionally harmless man, but one who has control over every aspect of her life. Caught up by his efforts to use Clem to alleviate his own lack of prospects, Vincent has no idea of how little power she actually possesses to help him, but he doesn’t really care.
This descriptive writing is powerful, and uncomfortable as the meetings between the two become harder to bear and a tragic conclusion seems inevitable.
Thank you to Netgalley and Sandstone Press for the chance to read it.

A beautifully written novel about grief, love, disappointment and hope, set during and after the First World War.