📖 Salonika Burning by Gail Jones 📖 Jones’s novels and early stories were so formative for me in my twenties and it feels a while since I’ve read her work. This novel tracks four characters (loosely based on real-life figures) stationed near Salonika (now Thessaloniki) during WWI. Through the characters we experience life at the periphery of war’s ‘action’. Dangers such as mosquito-borne illnesses and the psychological challenges of being daily confronted by death, destruction, isolation and the arrival of letters that confirm the death of loved ones far away. The events create a gentle build but one reads Jones for her delicate and immersive prose, often detailing at length the inner worlds of the characters, rather than for motion. The overall contemplations are layered: coping and keeping open to light (whether spiritual, intellectual, physical – such as via robustness of animals or the surprise of an enemy soldier’s face), while allowing one’s understanding of the horrors of war to expand infinitely: a series of losses of innocence or the continuous shedding of previous perspectives. One difficulty I had with the novel was that at times it had a sameness of voice (related to class and intellectual leanings) across characters, but I found it absorbing overall.

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