Traumatised teens: After the Bombing by Clare Morrall

Alma Braithwaite, a thirty-something music teacher at a girls’ school in early-60s Exeter, lives alone amongst the dust of the house where she grew up. Orphaned at fifteen by an air raid that also destroyed part of her school, Alma seems stuck in the past. That’s certainly the view of the new headmistress, Miss Yates, whose reforming ways Alma seems determined to resist. But, though now elevated to the role of teacher at her old school, there’s a part of Alma that’s still a traumatised teenager, dependent on the former structures for her sense of self.

Shame on me that, for much of the first half of this book, the boarding-school setting of both past and present strands, reminiscent of the Enid Blyton I devoured as a child, blinded me to its depths. I thought too that I’d had my fill of fictional takes on the Second World War. Yet, this novel took me somewhere new with its focus on the non-combatants – children, teachers, doctors, men whose disabilities exclude them from active service – and, in the aftermath, the women destined to a life of solitude because so many potential partners are dead. After the Bombing is a poignant novel about grief and loneliness, in the context of old-fashioned restraint, as well as the dislocating effect of trauma on adolescent development. In the character of Robert, the academic obliged to accommodate Alma and her three friends when their dormitory is bombed, there’s also a lovely example of the awkward character as introvert.

With its focus on music from classical to jazz, it might also function as an alternative biography of the author, Clare Morrall, also a music teacher born in Exeter. Having caused a stir with her debut novel, small-press published Astonishing Splashes of Colour, shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize at the age of fifty, she’s an inspiration for the older writer (although fifty now seems rather young), it’s great to see she’s still going strong with her sixth novel. Thanks to Sceptre for my review copy.