Book Review: Dawn of Fear

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. ( spoilers )