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Pincher Martin: The Two Deaths of Christopher Martin Catch-22 Arctic Dreams Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest The Bolivian times True History of the Kelly Gang

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Fabulous review…


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… of No Man’s Land in the Yorkshire Times this weekend. I think the novel is the best thing I’ve written, but any objectivity I might have had went out of the window long ago, so it’s nice to have reassurance from an unbiased source:

arts

Artis-Ann
Features Writer
1:00 AM 1st February 2025
arts

Whisper Of A Dream: No Man’s Land By Neil Hanson

From the outset, this novel is steeped in history, set, as it is, during World War One. The untitled opening description is of a grim journey to the trenches but time is reversed in Chapter One, which offers a description of a pre-war office scene: young ledger clerks are bent over their desks in the dismal, cold, damp office of a Yorkshire woollen mill – not quite Dickensian but not far off. The authenticity of the description enables the reader to share the gloomy mood of the as yet unnamed protagonist.

Each chapter is succeeded by a continuation of the opening narrative (helpfully italicized), posing more questions, as the reader quickly realises there are two time-frames, two plot lines running simultaneously throughout the book. It’s an interesting device not made clear until the end when they merge and the final twist is revealed.

Our young hero enlists, more out of a thirst for adventure than for any patriotic cause, but the recruiting officer readily accepts his lie, ‘Nineteen, Sir’. From that moment, we follow his path to war and the battlefields in France. Truly a bildungsroman, as the boyish thrill of adventure soon dissipates in the face of grim reality. Hanson’s descriptions are too detailed to be disregarded, providing an accurate picture of a time most of us are grateful not to have known. There are echoes of the work of the war poets, particularly Owen’s Disabled, Dulce et Decorum Est, Anthem for Doomed Youthand The Send Off which all strike a chord.

After a short, tough training period, life at the front line brings even harsher lessons: look after your weapon and keep your head down. Naïve recruits quickly learn that ‘life was finite and death absolute’. Holding onto ‘childlike certainties’ is the only way to cope with the undoubted horror. For those who don’t heed the warnings or who were just unlucky, there is only the ‘aching silence at roll call’, heard by their battle-hardened comrades. Pleasures are few and cherished. An eighteenth birthday comes and goes, just as memorable as the last but for very different reasons. Letters from home are vital connections with reality, and the simplest of keepsakes, however insignificant to the passing glance, are treasured. Time away from the front line privides vital r & r.

The journey from youthful optimism and patriotic fervour to cynicism and despair is a short one. Hanson describes ‘The Big Push’ in such detail that the reader can see the whites of the eyes of the soldiers with their muddied, bloodied and often disorientated faces. The fierce discipline – an inhumane addition to the suffering of the soldiers, but necessary, the Generals insisted, to ensure that mutiny, should it arise, is quickly defeated – is mixed with the camaraderie shared by the men, as many face their final moments.

The novel takes a sudden turn away from the battlefield as our hero makes a suffocating journey through dark tunnels before he rejoins his love, Maria, a French girl he has met and who had been forced to flee when her home was destroyed by enemy shells. From there to the end of the novel, lie more twists and turns, each one more desperate than the last. Son, father, hero, villain, victim, boy, man, friend and lover, he is a man of the people with many faces – ‘A mutineer, a traitor, a murderer…saluted and honoured for all eternity’ – a clue to the final twist in the tale when he has a wry laugh.

Neil Hanson has numerous books to his credit, all non-fiction; this is his first novel arising as a result of his research into the Great War. It is based on historical fact and reveals much about warfare, weaponry, life in the trenches and the military regime at the time. The battles of Verdun, Ypres and Passchendaele are all referenced and the casualty list is understandably not short. Fictitious characters with whom the reader can relate are interwoven with real historical figures. There is a distinctive sense of place and of the devastation caused by war, not just the physical razing of land and the loss of communities and livelihoods but much, much more. The war is still a rich source of drama and human emotion of which there is plenty in this novel. Despite all that, one scene (among many others) which remains with me, is the description of the school bully; how I longed for his disgrace and the strength to stand up for the vulnerable – just as the mutineers later tried to stand up to what they saw was wrong with the leadership of their armies and the inability of politicians to find peaceful solutions.

The ‘Army of the Dead’ is a myth to which Hanson refers: the existence of a ‘ghost army’ of deserters and wounded men who had gone out into No Man’s Land for all sorts of reasons and never returned. Traitors or survivors: it is a myth which gave strength to many, on all sides, who endured the loss of friends and family – a myth which provided comfort and support when faced with overwhelming grief. Underpinned by so much accurate knowledge of the period, this ethereal vision is even more poignant and captivating.

I was mesmerised by this novel; it is long and perhaps at times a little incredible that one person could endure so much, yet the human capacity to find strength in the face of adversity has frequently been recorded by writers and Hanson’s academic credentials add to the authenticity. I found myself racing to the end and didn’t regret a moment spent reading it.

No Man’s Land is published by Dale Publishing

 

 

 


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