Reception
In an interview in 2009, the novel's author Derek Robinson remarked that when the novel was first published in the UK in 1983, it sold very poorly although sales were better in the US. It was not until the release of the LWT mini-series based on the novel in 1988 that sales of the book greatly improved.
Angus Calder wrote about the novel in 1991, saying that The ex-public school types in Hornet Squadron are variously oafish, stupid, callow, neurotically disturbed or (in one case) positively evil...Cattermole is a relentless practical joker, liar, bully and thief with homicidal propensities which make him (Robinson's text insinuates) just the right type to be a fighter pilot...After destroying most of his pilots in horrible ways, minutely described, with uncannily precise technical know-how, Robinson, resisting closure, is bound to suggest a kind of 'point' by his selection of those who are still alive in the last pages. He goes on to say that Robinson can demonstrate his virtuosity by making somehow tolerable page after page of silly RAF backchat linked with pointless and sometimes cruel horseplay; he can emphasise stresses and fatigues which destroy men's judgement and set us up to mock the crumbling organisation of Fighter Command. But he cannot end with the Luftwaffe winning: because it didn't. (The pilots) might not be chivalric young Englishmen but they are still in the air fighting at the end, as indeed their whole groggy Command was. Robinson's book is very exciting and often, in gallows-humour mode, very funny. However he cannot counteract his reader's knowledge of the Big Fact (the Allied victory), which at times makes his approach to the battle seem wilfully cynical.
Read more about this topic: Piece Of Cake (novel)
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“Aesthetic emotion puts man in a state favorable to the reception of erotic emotion.... Art is the accomplice of love. Take love away and there is no longer art.”
—Rémy De Gourmont (1858–1915)
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