Book Review: Dawn of Fear

[osprey_archer]

littlerhymes and I continued Susan Cooper readathon with Dawn of Fear, which is quite an oddball among her other work: semi-autobiographical novel set during World War II, centering on young Derek and his friends Peter and Geoffrey. Derek and Peter are closer than either of them is to Geoffrey, and Derek and Geoffrey sometimes spar, with Peter stepping in as peacemaker. It’s a complicated and deftly drawn dynamic.

The boys are young enough that the war is just the everyday background of life to them. There have always been bombs dropping from the sky, it’s normal to spend most clear nights in the shelter, and even though they’ve seen bomb craters, they have no clear understanding that the bombs could be really dangerous to them. They’re thrilled on the rare instances that they get a chance to watch a dogfight before they’re hustled into the shelter.

As a child who was petrified of tornadoes despite never personally seeing tornado damage, I find this mindset completely baffling. But maybe if we had been hiding in the basement from tornadoes just about every night instead of once or twice a year, I would have found it too normal to be scary, just like Derek and co consider bombing raids.

This is not a criticism: Cooper is pretty clearly writing out of her own experience, as she would have been just about exactly Derek’s age during the war. More a reflection on how varied human experience can be.

Anyway, as you might guess from the title, by the end of the book Derek does learn to be afraid - not, initially, of the bombs or the war itself, but through a feud that he and his friends have with some boys from the next street over, which escalates when two older boys get involved. One of the older boys has joined the Merchant Navy, while the other is a shirker. What starts as a free-for-all fight with all the kids ends with the two older boys duking it out in a real brawl that only ends when one of them gets knocked out.

It’s this experience of seeing a real fight, motivated by real hatred, that awakens fear in Derek. Then Peter dies in a bombing raid, which is one of those endings that perhaps sounds unfair in summary but feels horribly real in context. Death has been falling from the sky for the whole book. It was only a matter of time before a character we love died.

Comments

[asakiyume]

Although I think you're right that you would likely have felt differently about tornadoes if hiding from them was a near-daily routine, I think it's also true that some people *are* still frightened. Also, if Derek and his friends are in the shelters while the bombs are falling, then they're not seeing people being blown up in front of them--they're seeing the damage after the fact, but that's different. ... I remember one time driving through a storm with strong winds. I've seen the aftermath of those sorts of storms all the time--branches and sometimes trees down. But this time branches, heavy ones, were falling *as I was driving*. I knew one could fall on my car and there was nothing I'd be able to do about it. That gave me a way different perspective from being in a house with a strong roof.

... I like it when there are outliers in a writer's oeuvre like this. I like when people have tried all kinds of writing.

[osprey_archer]

Oh, goodness, driving in a storm that is knocking branches off the trees sounds SO scary.

One of the things I found interesting about this book is that early on, someone the boys know a little bit does die in the bombing - but that in itself isn't enough to bring home the danger to the boys. This person was only a nodding acquaintance, so it still feels somewhat removed, not like something that could truly hurt THEM.

I also love it when writers have outliers like this. There's a lot of variation between Cooper's fantasy novels, but it's interesting to see her do something that is completely non-fantasy, too.

[asakiyume]

Nodding, re: the acquaintance who dies Trying to relate it to my own experiences, but it's hard. Like, I was anxious about, for example, Covid, but not deathly frightened, ever. But a disease is different from bombs. And I might have been deathly frightened if I had a frontline job and a health condition.

[wychwood]

For a long time this was the only non-TDiR Cooper I'd ever seen, and it left a serious mark on me as a child reader. I still own my copy, but I haven't re-read it in probably twenty years or more, because I couldn't face it. The emotional intensity got to me so much.

[osprey_archer]

Yes, it's so intense. And I'm sure even moreso for a child.

[skygiants]

Have you seen Hope and Glory? This was one of those formative childhood movies for me -- my mom loved it and we quoted it all the time -- but it's so good at conveying how everything about the Blitz and the way the war has turned things topsy-turvy is a thrilling adventure to our POV child, while the adults in the background are all having a Very Different Experience.

[osprey_archer]

I haven't, but it sounds right up my alley. No doubt the adults are all "Oh God how can little Johnny grow up under these conditions?" while little Johnny is having the time of his life.

[genarti]

As a counterexample (not that you need it, but just because the idea of being petrified of tornadoes as a Midwestern kid was baffling to me), I was startled as an adult to learn how destructive tornadoes really can be, despite growing up in the Midwest and having plenty of tornado drills, tornado watches vs warnings, times when we went down to the basement just in case, having tornadoes strike other towns in the area, etc. But we never went to see the damage with our own eyes, and to me it was very much an "oh, it's only a watch! Those happen all the time! Sure, we might watch tv down in the basement today, but we're obviously not going to stress about it!" kind of situation to me.

I thought from the name I'd read this book, but the details don't sound familiar at all, so I guess I didn't! It sounds like a really interesting take on a WWII story.

[osprey_archer]

I was a very fearful child! I also worried about house fires despite never having seen the results of a house fire, known anyone who had a house fire, or otherwise been exposed to a house on fire in any way. There was a collapsible ladder in my closet to be used in case of house fire and the existence of the precaution was enough.

Yeah, it's different than the other kid's WWII stories I've read! The children are not usually so "Eh, whatever," about the air raids.

[threeplusfire]

I am definitely that person standing out in the yard squinting at a funnel cloud and saying "Wonder how fast that's going?" hahahah. I feel like for years I got a tornado on my birthday every year. (My 18th birthday was derailed by a tornado so large and historical it has its own wikipedia page!) The worst was getting the tornado during school because the only safe place seemed to be the bathrooms so it was classrooms of kids crammed into bathrooms. (That time the tornado hit down the street but I was disappointed that we didn't get to see any of it!)

[osprey_archer]

At my school we were always in the halls, maybe because they'd just decided that we wouldn't all fit in the bathrooms? Or possibly the bathrooms were against the outside walls and had high windows up near the ceilings, so the halls were safer.