Book review: The Illuminations
THE Allied soldiers who witnessed the atrocities of the concentration camps of World War II often used the phrase: ‘I know what I’m fighting for.’
No such moral certainty exists for the allied soldiers in Afghanistan, in Andrew O’Hagan’s subtle new novel.
The story has two strands. Luke is an unlikely soldier, a thoughtful artistic type now captain of a platoon tasked with training members of the Afghan army.
Meanwhile, his grandmother Anne is lapsing into dementia, but her senior moments betray a dark sense of unresolved secrets in her past, and an explanation for her emotional neglect of Luke’s mother, Alice.
The novel shuttles between these two strands, pulling them closer as Luke, his grandmother’s kindred spirit, returns from his traumatic tour of duty and accompanies her to Blackpool.
While Anne’s life in an Ayrshire sheltered housing complex is done well, the best scenes convey the raw, authentic dialogue of soldiers in a war they don’t understand.
