This book comes with a soundtrack. Listen to Sinatra while you read this review, and you will have the atmosphere for the beginning of the story.
Moonlight Becomes You

This is a war story and it is a love story, but it isn’t just like any war or love story you have read before. It is written by a man who obviously saw the war and probably saw a lot of young men and women struggle with the massive responsibility they shouldered and the precarious nature of falling in love during such a pervasive conflict.

Gervase Robertson is a section officer with the W.A.A.F; a young lady who takes her job very seriously and feels compelled not to let anything get in the way of her duties. Peter Marshall is a twenty-four year old bomber pilot who has survived in excess of fifty sorties into German territory, who falls for Gervase, as the saying goes, like a ton of bricks.

I could not stop thinking about how young these two were, how much authority and risk of life lay in their hands, how well they handled it, and how different it was to twenty-one or twenty-four in this world of bombs and death than in the days of relative peace we have known. I can scarcely imagine a single twenty year old who could bear this burden now, although I am sure there have been many such during the wars in the Middle East and I know for sure there were in Vietnam. I’m not sure why, but World War II always seems like a more intimate and omnipresent war, especially when told from the British point of view.

This is also a bit of a fishing story, the way [b:A River Runs Through It|38300|A River Runs Through It|Norman Maclean|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388204089l/38300._SY75_.jpg|49325401] is a fishing story. I wonder what it is about standing on a bank or in a river casting for fish that conjures a scene of peace and joy and oneness with nature. Shute’s writing made me wish I could go once more and sit on the bank and have the fish I caught fried up over an open fire, as we were known to do when I was young.

I love Nevil Shute. I love the way he simply tells his story without fanfare and the way his characters seem to be people you know and can believe in. It occurs to me that one of the things I love about his books is the decency of his characters; a quality that is entrenched in them and their world.

Couldn’t close without offering the second installment in the sound track. I played this while I read the final chapter. It was significant.

A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square
( )

I suppose in a way this was a bit silly, but I rather liked it. It was a bit calmer then most of the other stuff I'd been reading. We have a WWII bomber pilot, Peter Marshall. His bomber mates get him interested in fishing. One day, he catches a "big one", a pike. He wants to show it off, but no one is much interested in seeing the amazing fish, except for a young WAAF, Section Officer Gervase Laura Robertson. She's in the signaling corps. She likes the fish, and gets Peter to show her where he caught it. She's a country girl from Yorkshire and likes out doorsy kinds of things. Naturally, she and Peter begin to fall in love, especially after he takes her out one day to see a badger hole...or something.

Well, there are problems, of course, the airmen and WAAFs aren't supposed to consort on base. Then too, Gervase is not sure she could contemplate marriage because she has a job to do helping to defeat the Germans. Peter flies some bombing runs and has some issues with one. And so forth.

As they would have said back in those days, "it's rather a lovely book". It is also a bit silly. The romantic parts are so muted as to be easily missed. Perhaps it's a bit like the Amish romances that appear to be all the rage these days. So we get something like,

They turned aside presently behind a spinney and exchanged a token of mutual goodwill; presently they came out again a little dishevelled and sat upon a style and smoked a cigarette together before turning back to camp.

Yup, that's what passes for a "sex scene" in this book. 😉 I didn't mind in the least. ( )

A pleasant war drama about the romance between an RAF bomber pilot and a WAAF signal officer. The dynamic of the relationship can seem a bit jarring to modern readers, but it is a fine portrait of life on a bomber station during testing times. The combat scenes over Germany are also quite well done. All told, its fairly predictable progression doesn't encourage the book to transcend itself, but it is a well-put-together light read with characters you will warm to for a day or two. ( )

I liked it, although I was a bit disappointed.

Nevil Shute's stories aren't like everybody else's stories. He spends a lot of time setting the story and characters up with a lot of detail that modern readers might find tedious and a little boring. If there is one thing he does not do it is to jump right into the action. He lets you really get to know the people in his books. Pastoral is very much this way, with this story about a British Wellington Bomber pilot and his everyday pastoral life around the air base, eventually finding himself falling much too quickly in love with a WAAF and how that plays out. He has discovered a love of fishing so you get a LOT of that, but also the interactions and relationships with his own air crew and others. A lot of day by day this is how life goes stuff and then there are the dramatic moments (2 big ones). Love in the time of war. A bittersweet romance pretty much drives the story. I think a book like this would appeal to someone who has enjoyed "Foyle's War" on television.

The disappointment for me here was how the pilot more or less shoved a relationship onto the WAAF signals officer. He was obsessed and guilt tripped the woman into restarting a relationship that she had tried to cool off. Not quite a "marry me or else" but pretty close. My sympathies here clearly lay with the woman and my feelings about the pilot did almost a complete reversal into the dislike category.

Oh, there's a nice sweet touch at the very last couple of paragraphs of the book that made me smile. I suppose this is a little spoilery, but someone, who we can surmise is the author, steps into the story for the last scene. ( )

I was a bit annoyed at the overall plot- girl gets bullied into marrying a pilot during WW2- but I suppose back in the 40's and 50's the story might have been received a bit better. Otherwise, this was a good book, and reminded me a lot of the series Foyle's War. Nevil Shute is the author of A Town Like Alice, as well, and I really liked that one, so I grabbed Pastoral when it turned up on the community free books shelf. The copy I read was smoke damaged, as if it survived a housefire or spent a long time too close to a chimney. This fit with the book rather well, actually. I definitely recommend this book to anyone who enjoys romantic stories, WW2 historical fiction, books about flying and aircraft, or books by lesser-known classic authors.
If you enjoyed A Town Like Alice, the TV series Foyle's War, or books by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, you might like this book. ( )