By Paul Carrier
I should confess, in the interest of full disclosure, that I have not read Alexander McCall Smith’s biggest claim to literary fame, The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency novels. But I have fond memories of the prolific author’s shorter, less celebrated, Corduroy Mansions series, which gave a starring role to a terrier named Freddie de la Hay.
Now McCall Smith is back with a heartwarming tale whose cast of characters includes another memorable canine with a grandiose name: Peter Woodhouse. A border collie from England during World War Two, the pooch finds himself, for a time, stuck behind enemy lines in occupied Holland.
Initially, The Good Pilot Peter Woodhouse centers on the relationship between Valerie Eliot, a young Englishwoman working on a farm, and Mike Peters, a British-based American airman whose job it is to take reconnaissance photos over German territory.
Val and a distant cousin, Willy, live with Val’s aunt, Annie. When Willy sees a farmer mistreating his dogs, Willy brings one of them — Peter Woodhouse — home. Annie decides she cannot keep the dog, so Val arranges for Mike to house him at the nearby American-run airfield where Mike is stationed.
As time goes on, Val and Mike fall in love. She become pregnant. They become engaged. Peter Woodhouse, meanwhile, proves to be such a hit at the base that he becomes a mascot for the flight crews, and joins Mike on reconnaissance missions. Their lives — and Val’s — take a dramatic turn when the Mosquito carrying Mike and his navigator is shot down over the Netherlands, with Peter Woodhouse also on board.
With help from the Resistance, Mike and the unnamed navigator find refuge in a nearby village. (Peter Woodhouse, kenneled nearby by the Resistance, periodically visits the downed fliers.)
A German corporal, Karl "Ubi" Dietric, eventually discovers the Americans, thanks to Peter Woodhouse's collar, which identifies him as a U.S. Air Force "Dog First Class." Ubi quickly makes a fateful decision about their fate, and his own saga both during and after the war eventually becomes another focal point of the novel.
McCall-Smith explores difficult topics here — loneliness, loss, bigotry, mental disability, vengeance, animal cruelty — with great delicacy, and without distracting from the advancement of the plot. The reader comes to realize that life after the war was as trying for some, in its own way, as surviving the conflict itself, and not just for defeated Germans like Ubi.
“The vicar’s cracked shoes projected from under his white cassock, the hem of which was frayed, as everything was after five years of war and the shortages that war brought,” McCall-Smith writes of a post-war baptism in rural Britain. “There was even a smell of parsimony, some said: a thin, musty smell of things used beyond their natural life, of materials patched up, cobbled together, persuaded to do whatever it was they did well after they should have been retired.”
Some of the characters in The Good Pilot Peter Woodhouse, including Mike Peters, are not as fully fleshed out as they could be. Yet the story bounces along at such a good clip that any shortcomings in that department are easily overlooked in this charming, nostalgic tale imbued with a pervasive sense of decency.
McCall-Smith’s plotting flows so smoothly that the reader quickly settles in for a comfortable ride, seduced by the skill of a talented storyteller. In the end, despite the novel’s multiple themes, the importance of forgiveness may well be the central motif of this endearing novel.
Now McCall Smith is back with a heartwarming tale whose cast of characters includes another memorable canine with a grandiose name: Peter Woodhouse. A border collie from England during World War Two, the pooch finds himself, for a time, stuck behind enemy lines in occupied Holland.
Initially, The Good Pilot Peter Woodhouse centers on the relationship between Valerie Eliot, a young Englishwoman working on a farm, and Mike Peters, a British-based American airman whose job it is to take reconnaissance photos over German territory.
Val and a distant cousin, Willy, live with Val’s aunt, Annie. When Willy sees a farmer mistreating his dogs, Willy brings one of them — Peter Woodhouse — home. Annie decides she cannot keep the dog, so Val arranges for Mike to house him at the nearby American-run airfield where Mike is stationed.
As time goes on, Val and Mike fall in love. She become pregnant. They become engaged. Peter Woodhouse, meanwhile, proves to be such a hit at the base that he becomes a mascot for the flight crews, and joins Mike on reconnaissance missions. Their lives — and Val’s — take a dramatic turn when the Mosquito carrying Mike and his navigator is shot down over the Netherlands, with Peter Woodhouse also on board.
With help from the Resistance, Mike and the unnamed navigator find refuge in a nearby village. (Peter Woodhouse, kenneled nearby by the Resistance, periodically visits the downed fliers.)
A German corporal, Karl "Ubi" Dietric, eventually discovers the Americans, thanks to Peter Woodhouse's collar, which identifies him as a U.S. Air Force "Dog First Class." Ubi quickly makes a fateful decision about their fate, and his own saga both during and after the war eventually becomes another focal point of the novel.
McCall-Smith explores difficult topics here — loneliness, loss, bigotry, mental disability, vengeance, animal cruelty — with great delicacy, and without distracting from the advancement of the plot. The reader comes to realize that life after the war was as trying for some, in its own way, as surviving the conflict itself, and not just for defeated Germans like Ubi.
“The vicar’s cracked shoes projected from under his white cassock, the hem of which was frayed, as everything was after five years of war and the shortages that war brought,” McCall-Smith writes of a post-war baptism in rural Britain. “There was even a smell of parsimony, some said: a thin, musty smell of things used beyond their natural life, of materials patched up, cobbled together, persuaded to do whatever it was they did well after they should have been retired.”
Some of the characters in The Good Pilot Peter Woodhouse, including Mike Peters, are not as fully fleshed out as they could be. Yet the story bounces along at such a good clip that any shortcomings in that department are easily overlooked in this charming, nostalgic tale imbued with a pervasive sense of decency.
McCall-Smith’s plotting flows so smoothly that the reader quickly settles in for a comfortable ride, seduced by the skill of a talented storyteller. In the end, despite the novel’s multiple themes, the importance of forgiveness may well be the central motif of this endearing novel.
No comments:
Post a Comment