The Fall of Valor

Review by Shelter Somerset: Set and written during World War II, Charles Jackson’s “The Fall of Valor” is a masterful work that depicts marital crisis and simmering sexuality at a time when most of us might assume Americans would rather recoil from such frankness. But as Jackson highlights, the second war, in some ways, brought sexuality to the American forefront for perhaps the first time. John and Ethel Grandin, together ten years, hope a trip to the seashore might rekindle their troubled marriage. But after meeting young honeymooners on the boat to Martha’s Vineyard, John becomes obsessed with the groom, the handsome and burly Marine captain Cliff Hauman.