Peaking too early

War makes everything simple. There's a tunnel in front of you and you put your head down, and you struggle forward for the light at the end of it, one bloody impossible step at a time, and that frees you up somehow.

Louis de Berniece's, So Much Life Left Over

Peaking too early in life can cause a problem for many people, such as athletes, gorgeous movie stars and fashion models, ballerinas, chess masters, mathematicians, the best boy sopranos, whatever. What do they do with the rest of their lives?

Louis de Bernieres applies this idea to soldiers and nurses in the years between one world war and the next in his provocative 2018 novel So Much Life Left Over. They survived the war. How can they survive the peace?

Although there are many characters, most of the attention falls on Daniel Pitt, a pilot who didn't expect to live through the war. Now he looks for a career involving planes or motorcycles or anything fast and dangerous. He marries Rosie, who lost the man she loved in the war. They have a daughter and then a son, losing a boy in between. Done having children, Rosie turns Daniel away and then tries to turn the children against him.

Daniel turns to other women, first a girl in Ceylon, where they live after the war, and later a housemaid in England. Rosie's sister, a lesbian, wants children and invites Daniel into her bed, with her lover's permission. They have two children together, with Daniel called their godfather.

The lives of these and other characters don't seem to come into focus again until a new war with Germany breaks out. War makes everything simple again.