Love is a Durable Fire

World War II as experienced by two brothers, schoolboy James Berkeley and RAF fighter pilot Chris, is the overarching event of this forthright, tender, male-centered novel. Members of the Bermuda branch of the proud English Berkeleys, the boys suffer the stigma of ""Colonial Wallahs.'' But the family's splendid Georgian hall in Lincolnshire represents the old England they love and serve. Verses by Sir Walter Raleigh carved in its oak banisters provide the novel's title and reverberate even after the hall, its parks and deer have been vandalized. Chris is shot down over France; Piquette, the French-Jewish woman he loves, is seized by the Gestapo. For James the war means idolizing and mourning for his brother, while living through the bombings, and the brutalities and homoerotic affairs of public school. This is the middle volume of Burland's already concluded trilogy; A Fall from Aloft and A Few Flowers for St. George will be reissued later this year. (March 24)