Helen Pitt
The Clouds Above is billed as 'a novel of love and war, it is also an argument for loving life despite its horrors. Greig's characters may be risking their lives amid the chaos of the Battle of Britain, but they—and his readers— come to understand that risk is what lies at the heart of any life that is fully lived.
— New York Times
Publishers Weekly
From Scottish poet and novelist Greig (When They Lay Bare) comes this intensely lyrical and nostalgic novel of wartime love between a young RAF pilot and a comely radar trainee in 1940s England. When Sgt. Len Westbourne meets university-educated Stella Gardam at an RAF dance, it's probable that the difference in their social classes will preclude an intimate relationship. But as bombs begin to rain down on England, and dogfights erupt in the sky, their hesitant romance blossoms into something far more serious. Despite the wartime atmosphere, there's a curious lack of tension in Len and Stella's affair, but eventually their cautious avowal of love illustrates the real poignancy of common wartime liaisons. There are some moments in which Greig seems on the verge of capturing something unique and delicate, but the frequent changes in point of view somewhat dissipate the drama. Rather than focus on the urgency driving the lovers into each other's arms, Greig conveys the day-to-day details of wartime, the weariness and the fear, an atmosphere that grounds the tale in reality. The liveliest characters are Stella's buoyant friend Maddy and Len's equally boisterous counterpart, Polish pilot Tad, both of whom meet sad ends. With the WWII setting, the romance amid chaos and the author's previous work as a poet, the publisher is obviously hoping for comparisons with The English Patient. While Greig isn't quite a match for Ondaatje, his narrative slowly acquires depth and poignancy, and is sure to appeal to those in "the vanishing generation" to whom Greig dedicates his novel, who recall those days of courage and glory and loss. (Oct. 4) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
Library Journal
The author of five poetry collections and several novels, Greig (When They Lay Bare) acknowledges deriving much of his inspiration here from the many works that have been written about the Battle of Britain (by Len Deighton, Angus Calder, and Richard Hillary, for instance). Through his young, energetic characters, we view a generation desperate to get through the war and return to normalcy, stability, and calm something they yearn for with an urgency they believe to be well beyond what their parents felt at the end of Word War I. Their lives between the raids and sorties are filled with gin, dancing, and passion as well as idealism and grief. They run for the countryside during their infrequent leaves and cling to each other desperately. What makes this more than just another potential screenplay for the History Channel is Greig's talent as a poet, which shows throughout this beautifully crafted narrative. He tells his story with respect for those who lived through that terrible time. A British Red Badge of Courage, this book deserves a wide readership. Highly recommended. Susan Clifford Braun, Aerospace Corp., El Segundo, CA Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
An immensely involving depiction of the Battle of Britain on the home front (England, 1940) is the Scots poet and novelist's moving homage to an embattled and courageous generation. An omniscient narrator begins the story, which quickly settles into an alternation of the diaries kept by its two principal characters. He is RAF pilot Sergeant Len Westbourne, a young man from the country, inexperienced and unsophisticated; she is radar defense operator Corporal Stella Gardam, a bookish, wary young woman who meets Len at a dance, then begins an affair during which she comes to share his almost instantaneous love. Greig has mastered the relevant technical-mechanical contextual detail, and the novel breathes a convincingly dense period atmosphere that recalls such earlier war-centered fiction as Elizabeth Bowen's The Heat of the Day and Henry Green's Caught. His intense focus on Stella and Len is effectively varied by briefer concentration on such vividly conceived figures as her effervescent girlfriend Maddy ("a cheery bouncing blonde") and his fellow pilot Polish expatriate Tadeusz Polarczyk, a Hemingway-like world-weary European who has joined the Brits to fight the Luftwaffe, in order "to revenge his family and his vanished country." The lovers' bittersweet idyllic meetings are further counterpointed against ominous indications of the air war's increasing closeness (the death of Stella's father from injuries sustained during his rescue of a terrified dog from a bomb site; Len's hallucinatory dreams of going down in flames) and quietly reverberating set pieces, like Len's tense, restrained conversation during a home furlough with his stoical father, a veteran of the trenches during anearlier world war. The intensity builds slowly, and to devastating effect: Greig makes us care for his characters, and fear (quite justifiably, as it turns out) for their safety. A fine novel, every bit as good as the one to which it will inevitably be compared: Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient.
