The Sum of Things is the final volume of [Olivia Manning's] Levant Trilogy (itself a continuation of the Balkan Trilogy)….

[There] is clearly a problem in writing "series" novels in which the same characters recur, especially if, as in this case, each novel is designed to stand independently. How much characterization can be taken for granted? Must physical descriptions be given all over again?

Olivia Manning repeats an awful lot….

The major and constant theme of the trilogy is the uneasy relationship between Guy and Harriet, stranded in the Middle East during the Second World War. But there is in this final book one striking difference, and it is this difference that forces one to see the book as overwhelmingly concerned with disappearance, death, loneliness and loss: the two main characters are separated for most of the time….

Both Guy and Harriet pass through ordeals of solitude—though...