A World Of Other People by Steven Carroll
Strong and reserved, Iris is a woman living in the middle of the London Blitz. She’s good at her job, but passionless about almost everything around her. Feeling useless in the war effort, she volunteers to be a watcher on the rooftop of T.S. Eliot’s publishing house. Her first night on the job turns out to be the final evening of the Blitz and, together with Eliot and two other companions, she watches a plane fall out of the sky, afire and doomed.
Jim is an Australian pilot living in his own fatal world. He too is detached, yet four simple words from a woman he’s never met before – Are you all right? – might just be the thing to save him. So begins an affair in the middle of a war that feels like it will have no end. Every moment is precious, and Jim and Iris try to grasp onto what they can, feeling adrift in a world gone mad.
Steven Carroll crafts his characters in such a way that you experience their discomfort, feeling everything they feel, rather than just seeing what they see. Although it would be classed as historical fiction, this is more of a look at a relationship between two people, and how these things form and break in staggering detail, from a truly accomplished author.