A slow-burner which develops into a serious, sobering, beautiful consideration of human nature under duress.

Hans. Ludo. Bruno. Lila. Four children bathed in that sweet-cider glow of summers long ago. The boys are in love with Lila, a Polish aristocrat who dusts wild strawberries with sugar. She strings the boys along like a harp-player, and the summers pass. Right into 1939 no-one credits these rumours of war.

Ludo is the narrator, nephew of celebrated French kite-maker Ambrose Fleury. The kites are literal and figurative - symbolising such a string of things: ambition, folly, love, the future, reason, and unreason. Throughout the novel, buffeted by the winds of war, the characters reach for their own ‘blue yonder’; some remain tethered, some are torn, some are lost.

“Bruno, someday you’ll die of kindness, tolerance, and gentleness.”

“Well, given the options, it isn’t a bad way to go.” (102)

The unthinkable happens. Poland is invaded, France is occupied. Memory, hope, and imagination are soon the only nourishment around; a little untethered madness goes a long way. As does collaboration, resistance, or both. Under occupation, what is reasonable or unreasonable?

Lila, with sunlight in her hair and burns on her hands, repeats: Above all I had to survive. Do you understand? Do you?

The Kites is a novel of memory, moral choices, and the inhumanity of humans. The face of the enemy is not monstrous at all - it’s human and utterly familiar. Today, the Nazis, yes, yes; and tomorrow? We only have to open the newspaper to see the daily cruelty of the human.

Each character holds their own, but in particular, chef Marcellin Duprat and Hans von Schwede command their scenes. The first, preserving the whole of France in the dishes he serves to the Nazis; the second, the German officer, in love with the enemy.

There is a gravity running through The Kites which makes it a hard book to love, equally a hard book to forget. It’s a captivating, serious work - and the last writing Romain Gary did before shooting himself.

Related Reads:

Darkness Visible by William Styron - a rare and elegant portrait of depression

Beatrice and Virgil by Yann Martel - a startling, shocking treatment of the ugliness of human nature