I knew nothing about Dan Billany until I decided to read The Trap, published posthumously in 1950, but his life story sounds dramatic enough to be the plot of a novel in its own right. As a Lieutenant in the British Army during World War II, he was captured in North Africa and transported to a camp in Italy. He wrote The Trap during his internment and, when he made his escape, left his manuscripts with an Italian farmer, who sent them to Billany’s family after the war ended. Billany himself never returned home and is thought to have died in 1943.

The Trap, I think, must be at least partly autobiographical, as its protagonist, Michael Carr, is also a young army officer sent to North Africa in the early years of the war. The first half of the novel, though, describes the quiet life Michael leads in Cornwall before war breaks out and his relationship with his girlfriend, Elizabeth Pascoe. Michael takes his time to tell this part of the story, in a style which is slow and rambling – quite ‘stream of consciousness’ at times – but I liked it. The writing is beautiful, painting a picture of a young working-class couple’s life in the 1930s, as well as delving into Elizabeth’s family background with descriptions of her parents’ marriage and the house in which she and her brother grew up.

I really enjoyed the domestic section of the novel, although it wasn’t what I had expected at all. I had been expecting a war story...which it is, but not until you’re halfway through the book. At this point, after some training at a camp in the English countryside, Michael is sent to fight in the deserts surrounding Tobruk and suddenly his life with Elizabeth seems very far away. As a young officer, Michael has to learn how to lead men and how to care for those under his command. The novel explores some of the problems he experiences with his men, as well as the challenging conditions they face in the desert before they even encounter the enemy. Knowing that Billany had lived through all of this himself, I have no doubt that his descriptions were authentic.

Looking at other reviews of this book, I think most people read it primarily for the story that is told in the second half and were disappointed with the time devoted to Elizabeth and her family. For me, it was the opposite: I preferred the first half set in Cornwall and started to lost interest once Michael arrived in North Africa and the book became more concerned with military tactics and army life. It felt almost like two separate novels in the same book – the two halves have a different tone, a different pace and a different style.

I found The Trap too uneven to be truly satisfying, but still worth reading, as much for its place in history as for its story.

The premise of Dan Billany’s The Trap was too intriguing to ignore. The phrase “unsurpassed realism” jumped out at me, but I was also fascinated by the jacket description. Stories set in North Africa during the war aren’t as common as those set in continental Europe and I was curious to how the material would be treat by someone who’d actually experienced it. I didn’t register the bits about 1930s Britain, probably because the subject matter didn’t interest me all that much, but there is the rub as the chapters dedicated to the protagonist’s quiet life in Cornwall proved overwhelmingly dull and all but killed my interest in the novel.

The first half of the book is dedicated in large part to chronicling the life of Michael’s wife, Elizabeth. The prose is that of a more mature and expressive age, but the content is dry beyond measure. I simply didn’t care about Michael’s better half and more than once caught myself neglecting the details of the plot. I flirted with the idea of abandoning the novel several times, but ultimately opted to skim through much of the first half of the narrative. Michael’s training proved more interesting, but I’d already begun to lose interest by the time he was sent to North Africa and struggled to get into the story despite the authenticity of Billany’s descriptions.

When push comes to shove, I appreciate The Trap for the insights it affords, but I’d have difficulty recommending to as entertaining fiction. There is an abundance of scholarly merit in this piece, but I don’t think well-suited for casual readers.