For a book about war, Point of No Return has an oddly gentle pace. It follows a US infantry battalion in northern Europe in the later stages of World War Two.

We see their privations and boredom, the cold, the harsh conditions and their camaraderie, alternating with bursts of battle and brutality. Soldiers are killed then replaced and the cycle begins again.

The main characters are Lt Col Smithers and his new driver, Jacob Levy. Smithers has almost mythical status among his men because he has never been wounded. Levy has been injured three times and hopes his proximity to Smithers will afford him some protection. Smithers, though young and from an ordinary background, has risen through his skill but the responsibility weighs on him as he is caught between his troops and the orders handed down from the faceless higher ranks.

Both Smithers and Levy dream of home and try to imagine a future after the war. They know that war has changed them, that they won’t be able to fit easily into their old life. Levy gives much of his time to daydreaming and falls in love with a woman in Luxembourg. Even though they lack a common language, he imagines she will share his plans for the future.

The end is jarring, deliberately so, and I’m still not sure how I feel about it. There is an afterword from Martha Gellhorn where she says she wrote the book entirely for that ending and this somehow undermined my involvement in what I’d read before. Still, it’s an interesting and thought-provoking read and definitely worth a look.
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I received a copy of Point of Not Return from the publisher via Netgalley.
This review first appeared on my blog https://katevane.com/blog/ ( )

Originally published in 1948, this novel from renowned WW11 correspondent Martha Gellhorn is as absorbing now as it was when it first came out.

This tightly drawn, both tender and tough story follows a U.S Army infantry battalion in Europe through the last months of WW11, especially one of its soldiers, Jacob Levy. A young man of Jewish heritage who will confront the horrors of the Holocaust and tells how he had to come to terms with what he experienced. The often graphic scenes focus on a few other individuals and through their eyes we see action and its consequences as they describe what is happening. Through daydreaming often the men fantasied about better days, their sweetheart and life after the war. Their dreams although clean were explicit and rather repetitive. I presume there wasn’t much to do during down time for the boys but fantasize and in this story they did lots of it.

One part of this story is the typical war romance with a handsome and naïve protagonist and non-English speaking woman and the other part is a serious Holocaust novel with the horrors of Dachau and the realities of war. The novel includes an afterword where Martha Gellhorn tells us her own experiences as a war correspondent that went to Dachau soon after the Americans discovered its existence. The author wrote this novel with a keen eye for details and an awareness of how war affects everyone caught in its path.

Thank you to Open Road Integrated Media and NetGalleys for the opportunity to read and review this book. ( )