Ill Met By Moonlight - W Stanley Moss

 The wartime classic, Ill Met By Moonlight is built around the contemoraneous diary of Moss while he and the far better known Patrick Leigh Fermor went to Crete in 1944 to abduct the Nazi commanding the island, General Kreipe.

The reasons for the abduction are confused - Moss and Fermor have different memories of the plan's conception (during a high-spirited leave in Cairo).   Moss was an SOE newbie whereas Fermor had been leading the resistance on Crete for a couple of years.   The main point, in fact, was the sheer bravado of the exploit, guaranteed to dominate headlines around the world.   Personally, I suspect the Allied Command was delighted to stage a massive distraction in the Eastern Mediterranean while they prepared to land in Normandy two months later.

It is more like two weeks before D-Day when the raiders manage to get off the island with their captive (obviously they succeed; no one was going to publish a book about a wartime failure in 1950).  In the six or so weeks since Moss landed he and Fermor and their motley band of Cretans and Russians have survived many scapes and setbacks.   For the modern reader what stands out is the bravery of all parties, especially the locals who have most to lose and will have to face brutal reprisals.   Moss writes really well and this new edition is well put together, with extra material from Fermor, who wrote several books about his service on Crete.   Highly recommended.

Nemesis - Philip Roth

Here we have late Roth, great Roth, superlative Roth.  Set in Newark, New Jersey, in the furnace-hot summer of 1944, our hero is Bucky Cantor, 23 year-old athletic star who has been rejected for military service because of his appalling eyesight.  Bucky is nevertheless a local hero.  All the young boys want to be like Bucky, all the girls adore him.  Bucky is embarrassed not to be in the army with his friends but here in Newark he does his duty.  As a newly-qualified sports teacher he does summer work running his local playground.  Then he finds his personal battle.

Polio starts its annual rampage.  A bunch of Italian youths make mischief at Bucky's playground.  Soon after the first of Bucky's young charges - a promising young lad very much in the Bucky Cantor mould - falls ill and, shockingly, dies.  The Jewish parents (this is a wholly Jewish part of town) blame the Italian layabouts for bringing the infection up from the slums.  Some blame Bucky.  Bucky certainly blames Bucky.  For a time he fights then, at the urging of his fiancee Marcia, he does the unthinkable - the one thing no one ever expected Bucky to do - he runs away.  He takes up a cushy job at a summer camp for better off Jewish kids.  The consequences are obvious.  This is not a complex story.  What it is, though, is a powerful, thoroughgoing examination of the all-American local hero.  Roth spares us nothing.  He is as scientific in his dissection of character as he is in his polishing of prose.

I'm in two minds about the ending.  Is it too long (the final section, not the book itself)?  Is it necessary at all?  I didn't like the ending, but I suspect that's Roth's point.  It got me thinking, reading at deeper than normal level.  And that, I fancy, is what makes a masterpiece.  Check it out - now!  See what you think.