The Balloonist
In the summer of 1914, Scottish ex-cavalry officer Willy Fraser is left feeling restless and rootless after the death of his troubled father. A quest for danger takes him to Germany and Belgium, just as years of tension spill over into outright war. Along the way, he encounters the overweight but intrepid American journalist Chester K. Hoffman and the newly-married Belgian officer Claude Tavernier, both of whom will play significant roles in his life as war escalates around them.
In a literary world awash with World War I novels, James Long finds not one, but two unusual backdrops for his novel: the unexpected resistance of the Belgians, which was, at least partly instrumental in thwarting the Schlieffen Plan; and the lives of the balloon observers who directed artillery fire along the Western Front. There is no shortage of adventure – so much so that, at times, it seems astonishing that Fraser survives. But there is also a subtlety in the characterisation, particularly in the way the idealistic Tavernier and his devotion to his spirited wife Gabrielle influence Fraser, whose cynical exterior hides a longing for something more than the meaningless entanglements he has hitherto had with women.
There is one pretty hefty coincidence near the end, but the book is so well written, I’m willing to forgive that. (Strange things do happen in war.) I can’t help wondering who wrote the blurb and press release. Evidently it wasn’t the author, since s/he totally ignores the first 186 pages of the novel and seems unaware that the Balloon Section was part of the Royal Flying Corps.
Normally if a novel ends with a cliff-hanger, as this one does, my reaction is, “Yeah, nice try, but no sale”. In this case, I’ll make an exception.
