The Blind Light

July 15, 2020
Sixty years in the lives of two British families. In Evers' deliberately paced novel, two young British soldiers separated by social class become close friends in 1959 at a military base that features an installation known as Doom Town, a graphic simulation of the devastation wrought by a nuclear war. There, we follow the lives of James Carter and Drummond Moore through two generations as they marry, raise children, and deal with the complications that arise in their relationship when Carter, a privileged civil servant, persuades his working-class friend to leave his job at a suburban London Ford factory to purchase (as a front for Carter) and work the farm adjacent to Carter's estate in northwest England. Throughout their adulthood, the two men are haunted by the specter of nuclear holocaust, a fear that provokes a crisis for the Moores when a frighteningly realistic nuclear-attack drill brings their families together in the Carters' bunker in 1980. From the cultural upheaval of the 1960s through Thatcher-era austerity to the disruption of Brexit, Britain undergoes wrenching economic, political, and social change, but little of that appears to touch the lives of these characters in any significant way. The sole exceptions are the terrorist bombings in London on July 7, 2005, events that intrude on the story only obliquely because of the presence of a couple of the characters in the city when they occur. Instead, as he revisits his characters at gradually lengthening intervals, Evers is preoccupied with familial tension, mostly involving the Moores, including the estrangement of their daughter, Anneka, and Drummond's wife Gwen's protracted agonizing over whether to embark on an affair with a travel writer whose exotic life contrasts sharply with that of her stolid farmer husband's. Despite a handful of emotionally affecting scenes and some well-drawn characters, the novel feels overlong given its dearth of narrative momentum. The lack of palpable drama makes this multigenerational saga a disappointment.

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July 20, 2020
This engrossing tale from Evers (Your Father Sends His Love) revolves around two men, Drum Moore and Jim Carter, who meet in 1959 at a civil defense base known as Doom Town, where they work on nuclear war simulations. The men’s friendship begins during a game of cards and extends over five decades as they each marry and have children. In the 1970s, they arrange to live on adjacent properties and share a bunker in event of nuclear war. Over the course of this long setup in which the families are brought together, Evers explores the lives of Drum’s wife, Gwen, and their children, Nate and Anneka. Gwen’s ache is palpable on the page as she considers an affair with a writer. Anneka, meanwhile, leaves home in her late teens in 1980, following an incident involving James’s son in the bunker, which Drum tries to make her believe was a dream. Later, Nate, now in his 20s, has relationships with men and women. Evers’s narrative strategy often asks readers to recalibrate and fill in the gaps—divorces and other pivotal events happen off-page—but the effort is worthwhile. With its slow burn, Evers’s vivid, perceptive chronicle of secrets and desperation satisfies.

September 1, 2020
Doom Town is the catchy yet grim nickname for a real site in Cumbria, England, used for simulating the aftermath of a nuclear strike. In Evers' (Your Father Sends His Love, 2016) spacious and unusual saga, Drummond Drum Moore and Jim Carter run training rescue missions there in 1959 for their National Service, an experience that shakes them deeply and casts a shadow on their families henceforth. Evers excels at depicting the men's strong, identity-shaping bond, which doesn't quite surmount their class differences. Following their military commitments, Drum works at a Ford factory in suburban London and raises two children with wife Gwen, a former barmaid, while the arrogant, posh Carter weds and lives in rural Cheshire. Years later, Carter persuades Drum to take over his neighbor's farm, thus keeping Drum's loved ones secluded and safe, but in doing so, Drum loses sight of other family problems. The novel spans six decades, and the later generation's stories aren't as interesting, but the moody setting, rich in details reflecting social change in Britain, well suits this tale of lives eclipsed by fear.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

September 1, 2020

Doom Town, Evers's imagined simulation of the aftermath of a nuclear attack, is both fiction and metaphor. In this novel of steadfast friendship, conscripts become acclimated to human-wrought obliteration. Doom Town is a training ground for British soldiers where Carter, a son of privilege, and Drummond, a child of the working class, become comrades and friends, ultimately inseparable. It is also where their mutual obsession with surviving a nuclear attack begins. Here, nuclear annihilation is a blinding symbol of foreboding, of impending disaster, a theoretical analogy to the unforeseen disasters the two families must actually face. At times, the reader will hear the forlorn echo of Nevil Shute's On the Beach, but Evers (Your Father Sends His Love) unfailingly reminds us that there is hope, always hope, even in the truly moving death scene near the end. The narrative follows Carter, Drummond, and their families over 60 years, during which lives intertwine, children are born, and personalities evolve. VERDICT Unpredictable character arcs will keep readers wondering what will happen next, and the many tragedies and triumphs of each family evoke the same epic feel of generational change as Edna Ferber's Giant.--Michael Russo, Louisiana State Univ., Baton Rouge

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