The three books which make up The Levant Trilogy are “The Danger Tree,” “The Battle Lost and Won,” and “The Sum of Things.” These novels follow on from Oliva Manning’s, “The Balkan Trilogy,” in which we first met young married couple, Guy and Harriet Pringle. .” In the Balkan novels, we followed newlyweds, Guy and Harriet Pringle, as they embarked on married life in Budapest – later moving to Greece. “The Danger Tree” sees many of these characters reappear, such as Pinkrose, Dubebat, Lush and Dobson. There are also new characters, such as the young officer, Simon Boulderstone, who has been separated from his unit, and the beautiful Edwina. “The Danger Tree,” sees the Pringles now in Egypt; having fled Greece at the end of the “Balkan Trilogy,” As before, the move has not seen them any more settled – there are constant rumours of the planned evacuation of Cairo and the city seems to have become the, “clearing house of Eastern Europe.” Guy, so trusting and naïve, is hurt when Gracey appears to have no use for him in the organisation and finds himself shunted off to Alexandria, where Harriet worries he will be cut off by the approaching Germans. Unwilling to accept he is not wanted by Gracey, and always giving everyone the benefit of the doubt, Guy attempts to bury himself in work.As always, Harriet is in the unenviable position of seeing Guy always admired, and used, by his many friends; while he gives his attentions to his students, his friends and his acquaintances, but never to her. She feels ill-used, neglected and at a loss of how to help, making excuses for her husband, while the war continues to cause chaos around her. Simon Boulderstone is a good new character, whose attempts to find his unit, his struggles with the life of the army, and the sheer confusion of war, open up a new vista to these books, in showing us the men who are fighting, as well as the civilians who are coping with the encroaching war. The second in the trilogy, “The Battle Lost and Won,” follows seamlessly on from, “The Danger Tree,” and begins with Simon Boulderstone arriveng in Cairo on leave. Simon had been under the belief that his brother, Hugo’s, girl was Edwina, who has a room in Dobson’s apartment, as do the Pringles and Lady Angela Hooper. Edwina though, is a frivolous girl, currently obsessed with a titled beau, called Peter, and the minor embarrassment caused over Simon’s uncomfortable arrival, results in his later being promoted to a liaison officer. As in the other novels though, it is Harriet Pringle who remains centre stage in the story. She watches Edwina’s doomed pursuit of Peter and Angela’s odd obsession with the drunken Castlebar, both married men, with concern. As always, Guy is obsessed with work – he has now also been promoted and relishes his new responsibility to run the organisation. Giving lectures, finding teachers, organising entertainment for the troops. He pays little attention to Harriet and treats her as though she is little more than a nuisance. When she becomes ill, and Guy takes a gift Angela has given her to pass on to Edwina, Harriet decides to return to England. With all these books, Olivia Manning tells the story of war from the personal level. We are aware of rising Egyptian nationalism, of the tide of war turning as Rommel retreats, of how locals sneer at the English before the war turns in their favour, but this is cleverly done. Manning is not as interested in the main theatre of war – she is in the dressing room with the actors, who hear everything in whispers and snippets and rumours. As such, shocking events – such as an assassination – take on an air of farce. “The Sum of Things,” is the third in The Levantine Trilogy. In this concluding volume, Harriet heads for Damascus, having failed to board the ship to England that Guy wanted her to take. Unbeknownst to her, the ship was torpedoed and there are only a handful of survivors. Meanwhile, Harriet has no idea that Guy imagines she is dead.Many of the characters in earlier books also appear here, including the frivolous Edwina, Dobson, Angela Hooper, Castlebar, Aidan Pratt and the young officer, Simon Boulderstone, who was injured at the end of the last book. Guy finds his comfortable existence interrupted by news of Harriet’s death and is injured at any criticism of how he treated her. While Edwina attempts to use Harriet’s absence to integrate himself, Guy attempts to “take on” Simon.This book follows both Harriet’s journey and her encounters, as she travels from Damascus and eventually to Jerusalem, and Guy’s continued life in Cairo. Eventually, the two are reunited and the novel end with how the war has changed all of the characters. This is a moving, but realistic, conclusion to the war of Guy and Harriet Pringle and the cast of supporting characters. The war has made many grow more mature, has made others attempt to use the time they have to advance themselves and has brought others death, changed circumstances and different opportunities. I enjoyed this book very much and, indeed, the entire six volumes. Harriet Pringle is certainly one of the fictional characters that will stay with me and I found her journey fascinating. Overall, I think I preferred “The Balkan Trilogy,” to this series, but both are expertly written and well realised accounts of a young couple coping not only with married life in insecure times, but with a war which chases them continually from one precarious existence to another. These are books I return to every few years and, each time, find more to enjoy
Well, this one really is my edition, as I bought the book very recently. I love the colours, but I am not so sure Harriet Pringle would be wearing such a frumpy dress for her sight-seeing tours!In these novels the Pringles find themselves in Cairo, as the battle for the desert is going on and the Allies try to push the Germans back to Libya. In order to be able to tell us about the military operations, Olivia Manning here concocts Simon, a very young officer who strikes up an acquaintance with Harriet at the start of the book. Each chapter presents us in turns, more or less, Simon's and Harriet's story, the front and the routine of the civilians in Cairo.My impression when reading The Levant Trilogy is that people were growing really weary of the war and in a way were trying to have fun, to enjoy themselves while they could. There is a certain hedonism in the life of characters such as Edwina, Guy's friends or Angela Hooper. This hedonism can devolve into something seedy, as when some of the characters visit a sort of depressing sex club. I found these new secondary characters a bit more unpleasant than those in The Balkan Trilogy, but as events developed they proved to be more interesting and I could gather more empathy for them.As Harriet herself becomes more and more dissatisfied with her marriage, fate takes her to Syria and Palestine before reuniting her with Guy at the end in a very Shakesperean manner, at Edwina's wedding party where all characters gather. I quite enjoyed her visits to Damascus, Jerusalem and other places. As usual, she manages to find gentleman companions willing to drive her around and act as knowledgeable guides, but she never entertains the romantic notions she had for Charles in The Balkan Trilogy. At the end I wished I knew what had happened to that soldier, so idle in Athens, and then thrown into the fray, or to David, Guy's friend, who never arrived on the trains from Belgrade. That would make the stuff of nice fan fiction.
Do You like book The Levant Trilogy (2015)?
These three novels pick up, in Cairo, the story of The Balkan Trilogy. It is the story of a deep but flawed marriage set against the backdrop of World War II, always interupting and disrupting their lives in unforeseen ways. Given the length of the entire project, I would occasionally put it down and read something else. The characters are so well developed that I found I could easily pick it up after many weeks and get right back into the story. Manning is a master of evocative descriptions of people and places, and without straining for aphorisms she repeatedly achieves the same end. Sample quotes:“Every marriage was imperfect and the destroying agents, the imperfections, were there, unseen, from the start.””Guy and Major Cookson were the only people to follow Pinkrose’s coffin to the English cemetery and neither could be described as a mourner.”“He not only had more confidence and more to say for himself but he had lost the seedy look of the alcoholic for whom any money not spent on drink was money wasted...but he still chain-smoked, placing the pack open in front of him with a cigarette pulled out ready to succeed the one he held in his hand. He still hung over the table, his thick, pale eyelids covering his eyes, his full, mauvish under-lip hanging slightly with one yellow eye-tooth tending to slip into view.”“Beneath his confident belief in himself, beneath his certainty that he was loved and wanted wherever he went, he was deprived. She saw the world as a reality and he did not.”
—Dpdwyer
I really enjoyed this - maybe more than the first one. In this, you know Guy and Harriet really well, and it's just a question of watching them make their way. Harriet becomes more sympathetic, and Guy drives you up the wall; but there's this very different sense of marriage, like you have to make the most of it. Also, I found that Harriet's responses were increasingly expat; in Greece, she met Yakimov and realized that though she had disliked him, now he was simply and old friend, with whom she shared memories. The same again in Cairo, when she meets Major Cookson. This is so typical of expats. The people you know and still see become important to you - simply because you know them. Others fall away.
—Caitlin Brady
For the third time, finished this remarkable work. The first read was finished 5.2.88, following its BBC debut, "The Fortunes of War." The second read was finished 8.1.92. I'm thinking, before the end of it all for me, I might just go through it again, a fourth time, this time to carefully pull out quotes. Manning is, in this work, the only one I've read, eminently quotable. Her observations of people and life are uncannily penetrating. She must have been a careful watcher of things. I look forward to reading one of her biographies.
—Tom
