About the Book
The old people in the district would often say that Roy was not quite the same after he come back. There was a brother. A twin brother, Tony. Tony Mitchell, different boy but a good rugby player. Bit of a mental case, they said, but Roy would have none of it. He always stayed close to Tony when they were growing up.
They both went off to fight, must have been 1940. Only the one come back, though. Crete, they thought. We lost Tony over there.
Format: ebook (224 pages) Publisher: Text Publishing
Publication date: 4th July 2023 Genre: Historical Fiction
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My Review
A Better Place is one of the books on the longlist for The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2024. It’s a book I would probably never have come across were it not for its inclusion on the longlist. (You can find a full list of the longlisted books here.)
In the author’s hands, war is a machine that consumes human beings. ‘Screaming. Explosions. The spraying of sand and dust. Charging soldiers being shot to bits.’ The scenes on the battlefield are brutal, graphic and harrowing but they also feel absolutely authentic. And the horrors aren’t just confined to the combatants but to civilians as well. Many of the male characters’ behaviour is challenging, especially that of Roy’s comrade, Manny Jones. But there are also moments of unexpected tenderness and self-sacrifice.
Before reading this book I knew very little about the involvement of troops from New Zealand in World War 2. One of the things that struck me was the very particular bond of comradeship that existed between soldiers hailing from the same regions of New Zealand.
Roy is plagued by guilt at what he believes was his failure to save Tony despite the fact that, being brothers, they should not have been assigned to a position so near to the enemy. He’s sure that Tony would never have left him behind had the positions been reversed.
It’s difficult to say much more about how the story unfolds without giving too much away. What I can say is the reader always knows more about Tony’s fate than Roy does. This allows the author to take the reader beyond the battlefields of Crete, North Africa and Sicily to Silesia where there are experiences just as gruelling and cruel.
When Roy returns home to New Zealand’s North Island after the war he adopts a solitary existence, farming a piece of land allocated to him by the government. It’s as if he doesn’t want to engage with a world that doesn’t have Tony in it. When Roy eventually discovers what happened to Tony, it confounds his expectations in more ways than one.
A Better Place is not an easy read because of its subject matter but the writing is wonderful. It definitely deserves its place on the Walter Scott Prize longlist.
In three words: Powerful, moving, visceral
Try something similar: Patrol by Fred Majdalany
About the Author
Stephen Daisley was born in 1955 and grew up in the North Island of New Zealand. He has worked on sheep and cattle stations, on oil and gas construction sites and as a truck driver, among many other jobs.
His first novel, Traitor , won the 2011 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Fiction. Coming Rain won the Ockham Prize in 2015. Stephen lives in Western Australia. (Photo/bio: Publisher author page)
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