PIECE OF CAKE

by Derek Robinson ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 23, 1984

Like N. J. Crisp's taut Yesterday's Gone (1983) and Robinson's own Goshawk Squadron (1972), this novel takes a deglamorizing approach to the RAF in WW II--with a mixture of light black comedy and bitter authenticity that begins brilliantly, then runs out of steam somewhat. Robinson follows the RAF's Hornet Squadron from September 1939 to September 1940. The long opening chapter, set at the base in Britain, introduces the very young, mostly flip pilots, their ""implacably bright, slangy, superficial attitude""--with schoolboy pranks, boozing, and sheer incompetence. Their first mission is a model of underplayed comic ghastliness, reminiscent of Waugh: the pilots return in smug triumph, with several hits scored, and it only very gradually becomes clear that they've downed British planes. (""It does look very much as if something rather awful has happened,"" says Intelligence officer Skull, a Cambridge don--and a recurring antiwar voice.) Then, for about half of the novel, it's off to France, where new Squadron Commander Rex--popular, snobbish--obsessively trains the fliers in the fine points of close-formation, despite the derision of newly arrived US volunteer Christopher Hart III (a combat-wise veteran of Spain). During this itchy ""phony war"" period, two pilots court and marry local schoolteachers; an unstable, pathetic pilot is ""chopped"" from the squad; and super-cad ""Moggy"" Cattermole engages in foul deeds and dumb stunts--including a flying dare that leads to the pointless death of an insecure pilot. But then, in May 1940, the war really begins--disastrously: the close-formation style is a fatal failure; the pilots become disillusioned, angry; so a group of them arranges for Commander Rex to be shot down during the next mission--a murder which is swept under the rug by the powers-that-be . . . and which probably should have been the novel's powerful climax. Here, however, the pilot-mutiny is ill-prepared, unconvincing, and sketchy. Moreover, it's followed by 200 anticlimactic pages, which conventionally heap up war-horrors as the pilots approach the Battle of Britain: several are killed; one, bent on avenging his dead French wife, is quite mad (""Being crazy certainly helps"" in bombing); problems with tactics and equipment remain unsolved; RAF success-statistics are hyped for PR reasons; etc. And, throughout, Robinson fails to develop enough character-texture in his large, oddly faceless cast-of-characters--giving an overlong novel (nearly 600 pp.) only chronology as a shaping force. With stern, shrewd editing, then, this might have been the most powerful of RAF novels. As it is, it's superb in the first third, sporadically hilarious, always strongly narrated, but increasingly routine (and repetitious) in its preachier second half: a bulky mixed bag for the WW Il-aviation audience.

Pub Date: April 23, 1984

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1984

Categories: FICTION