This short novel, with very much the feel of a play, was written by John Steinbeck in 1942 as a propaganda piece to support the Allies’ war effort.
 
I wanted to find out if it would serve just as well as an allegory for today’s terrible war in Europe and the Russian occupation of Ukrainian territories. The answer is NO.

Steinbeck’s book served a purpose in its day, but that day is long past and it has little merit without that context. And literature with an agenda is almost always weak.
 
In Nazi-occupied countries during the Second World War, repression of the local populace was brutal when opposed, often simply administrative when not. Then there existed a modus vivendi, a hate-hate relationship, maybe, yet a relationship all the same, since life, however abnormal, had to continue in an arrangement of sorts.
 
When the book came out, it had more supporters than critics, but these were adamant in decrying its “soft and dreamy” tone. Steinbeck’s very patriotism was called into question. Citizens under occupation, though, read it avidly and approved.
 
It’s worthwhile examining why. Because Steinbeck’s work in the war brought him into contact with refugees from Norway, Denmark, France, Belgium and the Netherlands, and hundreds of thousands of clandestine translated copies of The Moon Is Down would end up circulating these occupied countries and being sought after.
 
The action takes place in a coastal mining town of an unnamed country, but which, for me, has a Nordic feel to it. The occupiers – not explicitly, but obviously German – take control of the municipality, while retaining the mayor in nominal authority for the pragmatic reason of helping to keep order and the coal mined. 
 
By not portraying them as inhuman caricatures, unmitigatedly evil and invincible, Steinbeck sought to portray the Germans not as sympathetic, but “fallible, even defeatable.” The people of occupied Europe understood this and the book found favour with them. The tyrannical Axis understood it, also. In Italy, to be found in possession of The Moon Is Down meant a summary death sentence.
 
And yes, maybe there were serving soldiers of the Bundeswehr in these countries who behaved with a measure of decency. Especially in Nordic lands, where the population was white, ordered, Germanic. It is nothing personal, is the implication. The military occupation is expedient and necessary. We are equals, but you must understand that we have orders to follow.
 
Had the action been set in, say, 1940s Jewish Prague, there is no way the scenario could have worked. And there is no way the book could or should win a sympathetic reception in Europe’s war today.
 
In Prague, or other eastern zones, the Nazis abhorred the Jews and the Slavs. Their mindset was of hate, contempt and killing.
 
In Ukraine, the genetic history with Russia may be mixed, but only one of these peoples has a soul. The Russians have no respect or mercy and the Ukrainian people meet this with a just and blazing fierceness. 
 
Their hatred for the Russian murderers of innocents is absolute and their unity in resistance is rock solid. There can be no respectful accommodation with the enemy, only deferred fury.
 
It is best not to pursue comparison where there is none.

Two passengers arrive by ship and take the same cab to Athens. A Greek returning to the site of childhood horror and an English rogue on the make, not very lovable but by no means meanspirited, just skint.
 
After that, as their individual progress is related, Mitsos and Kennedy’s paths cross more than once but not significantly and neither do their lives reflect each other, so the dual plot structure doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Unsworth also indulges in the literary sin of letting his enthusiasm for a place have the reader traipsing around the Athens scenery more than is called for. 
 
You kind of know what the ending’s going to be and I knew I wasn’t going to like it (but that’s just me).
 
Still, it’s a decent enough read, even if it doesn’t hold a candle to his fantabulous Morality Play, and Unsworth is a dab hand at ironic humour. I enjoyed Kennedy’s willingness, at once carefree and rash, not to hold back in his brazen plain-speaking, especially with the pompous, self-serving Jennings.

Whatever you do, don’t judge this book by its cover or its title. It’s a good read and a gripping one.
 
I don’t know what it is about his titles, but it’s as if David writes what he wants to say and then lets a flippant publisher call it whatever they like. Sunny Side Up was another one.
 
I couldn’t not find the story interesting. The setting is a small, isolated village in the hilly uplands of Granada, another patch of which has been my home for thirty years. David has lived in a similar spot for longer than that. Anyway, on every page were scenes and voices, attitudes and a way of life that I recognized intimately.
 
David Baird is one of those modest authors who lets a story write itself. His affection and respect for Andalucian village life and its people are patent and there’s natural humour here. At a wedding, when the bride is hit in the face by a handful of rice, her mother “belaboured the guilty youth with her handbag and a much sharper tool, her voice.”
 
Yet faithfulness to another kind of truth makes for a tense plot and a blood-tingling climax.
 
The sierra’s air is tough and clear, more still than stormy. Its unaffected people can be the salt of the earth, imbued with its native warmth, or shot through with distrust and even animosity towards the outsider.
 
Franco’s National Catholicism still lurks and festers in many a mind and outpost. In Baird’s fictional Benamargo, an overbearing priest rules with iron rod as judge and jury.
 
Trust ardour between a foreigner and a local girl to stir things up.
 
The passions of romance and Christ become darkly entangled. Goaded by the priest, the village’s partisan politics and parochial mentality of censure turn violent. Although the outcome appears as fated as in a classical tragedy, it may not be what you imagined.
 
The story struck a major chord with me, because the cruelty attending a certain Spanish conservatism is something I sought to bring out in The Asturian Campaign, so that it felt like meeting a kindred spirit.