© Editions Joelle Losfeld
Felix Levine was a sailor, and the secret of the sailor's life is that he is alive in the past and the future. For him the present is only something to be endured. If he tries to take root away from the sea he is doomed to failure, and those who attempt to hold him must suffer with him. Levine was washed up on the shores of England after his ship had gone down. As a refugee without papers of identification, he found himself everywhere an object of suspicion, finally sent to a camp in a northern town where he lived in a hut. Grace Helling had also come to this town as a refugee, after her parents had both been killed in a London air raid. It was a year when time had stopped and the world was breaking up. Both were lonely; the hour threw them together. But Levine was still a sailor; the sea began to ache in his bones.
There is a sense of power in every page of Levine which ensures for it a high place in the canon of Hanley's works. The narrative is well adapted to the dramatic requirements of the theme and heightens the poignancy and force of the novel because, as we follow the paths which bring Grace and Levine together, we already know that when they meet it will be at a point of no return.
Macdonald 1956
Translated into: French
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