As Little As Nothing

On the eve of the Second World War outside a village in England, four people rush to an airplane crash and change their lives forever
In the tumultuous year before war breaks out, a plane crashes on a country lane and four people are brought together in the aftermath. Miriam is recovering from another miscarriage and learns to fly as an escape from the disappointments in her life. Audrey is a middle-aged, upper-class activist who has shunned her society, travels the UK lecturing on reproductive rights, lives in a Gypsy caravan, and whose daily ritual includes a swim in a nearby river.
It is Audrey's nephew, Frank, who teaches Miriam to fly. A club foot and his suppressed homosexuality have made him reluctant to engage with anyone other than his aunt. But as he succumbs to his attraction to the crashed pilot and convinces Miriam to co-pilot an air race from London to Manchester, and as Audrey confronts her past, ghosts must be laid to rest.
With the war looming, As Little As Nothing beautifully explores resilience, the strength of new bonds, and the various ways we reinvent ourselves. In the tumultuous year before WWII breaks out, a plane crashes on an English country lane and four people are brought together in the aftermath. The novel uses its interplay of voices to explore early feminism and resilience, the strength of new bonds, and the various ways we reinvent ourselves.
Pamela Mulloy's debut novel, The Deserters, was published in 2018 and shortlisted for the ReLit Award. She is the editor of The New Quarterly and director of the Wild Writers Literary Festival. She has lived in Poland, England, and the U.S., and currently resides in Kitchener, ON, with her husband and daughter.
Miriam knew she needed to fly when she lost her fifth baby. Those luminous nights, the pearl moon casting shadows across the village as she took flight; her arms spread, her body soaring, undulating through the air currents as she went higher. Higher so that she could no longer see the village, and the space in which she existed seemed at once foreign and yet her own. This was her nightly journey, the one that might save her. For seven nights she existed in this liminal space, anchored to her bed, anchored to the idea that there was another Miriam who had overtaken her, one who existed in the bed of clouds that blindfolded the moon.
It was on the eighth morning that she heard the airplane she knew to be in trouble. Roused from a morning nap, the sound familiar living so close to the airfield at Hackley Aerodrome and Flying School. They'd become accustomed to the planes, but this sputtering was new and it pulled her, still weak from the blood loss, from her bed. She grasped the heavy drapery that kept her room as night and squinted at the intruding light. She opened the window, surprised at the soft, balmy air and looked skyward for the airplane that now seemed elusive. There it was, a choking sound that told her it was still up there somewhere.
She reached for a dress from the wardrobe and was soon clothed, the first time in over a week. She barely knew where she was going as she stumbled down the stairs and outside to her bicycle.
She was sore, and stiff, and in a weakened state but the sun was out and this surprised her so much that it was enough to keep her moving, and soon she was out on the road, right onto the High Street, then left on the Guildford Road that took her out of town in the direction of the aerodrome. Out in the open she looked ahead, scouring the sky for any sight of the plane and spotted it ahead, teetering eastward. She pedalled toward it, trying to calculate where it might come down.