Reading: Confusion

[white_hart]

I'd been putting off reading the third of the Cazalet Chronicles, because I wasn't quite sure I wanted to read about people living through the grimness of World War Two when the world seemed to be falling apart around me. Actually, though, the grimness seems less obvious in this one than it did in Marking Time; it begins in 1942, three years into the war, and where the last book showed how life changed in the early years of the war, in this one it feels more like a steady state which people have got used to. The main point of view characters are still Louise, Polly and Clary, growing up during the war and almost unable to remember what life was like before it; much as I like them, I would have liked to see a bit more of the rest of the family, who mostly only seemed to make very brief appearances as the novel took them through the last three years of the war (and some of the sections that didn't focus on the three girls actually focused more on one-off characters, including two who appeared to have wandered in at random from a Mary Renault novel; they were probably having a slightly jollier time of it in Howard's book, though not by much). Generally, though, I'm continuing to enjoy the series a great deal and looking forward to reading the next book soon.