Pictures of war

      26th. April, 1937, the terror bombing by the Luftwaffe, in support of Nationalist forces, of the Basque town of Guernica. The most infamous event of the Spanish Civil War, rendered and remembered starkly in Picasso's painting of that name.
     Dave Boling's Guernica is a fictional look at events before and after the atrocity, concentrating on the lives of 'ordinary' people, and - to make its point all the more forcefully - nice, brave, good people. It stresses the fierce cultural pride of the Basques, but leaves politics aside to concentrate on the human story, and it's an engrossing one: very well-researched, well modulated, ultimately uplifting - it held me. It's been compared to Captain Corelli's Mandolin, but that's not really a recommendation that would get me excited! I did enjoy it very much, but there's something about its 'pitch' which gives me pause: it's a good read but a predictable one, and I found the Civil War scenes in Victoria Hislop's The Return, for example, more forceful and illuminating as to the conflict than the single terrible incident of this book (though The Return is as a whole lot more ponderous). Guernica is a very human saga, though, and without meaning to belittle the book or the events it portrays, if you're looking for something like a Saturday afternoon main feature "weepie", this will fill the bill nicely.