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Ξεκινάμε λοιπόν στην Γαλλία το 1910 όπου ο

Read as part of The Infinite Variety Reading Challenge, based on the BBC's Big Read Poll of 2003.

I honestly can't be bothered to write anything particular exciting for this one. If it hadn't been on the list I would never have picked it up, though I am glad that I gave it a try. It simply wasn't for me, though I have to say that the love-story in the first half of the book was rather far-fetched and just felt very cold to me. I have nothing else to say: it was written well in terms of grammar, punctuation and spelling but it just dragged on and didn't hold my attention.


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Sometimes brutal, sometimes boring story of Stephen Wraysford and his life, mainly in France, before and during WW1. Not an easy read, certainly not a comfortable read. Some of the most brutally disturbing and shocking descriptions of life in the trenches during WW1 that I have ever read. Got quite emotional at the end.

I am stumped to understand why people rate this book highly enough to land it in the BBC Top 100. Was it just the only book they'd read all year so they threw the title in due to familiarity?

I knew I was in trouble with it when I had reached the quarter mark without having any sort of interest in any of the characters. Seriously, how does that happen in a best seller? Just so bland and boring.

Aside from some of the trench warfare section, I found this book agonising, shallow and lame.

Blah.

Як людина, що завжди знайомиться з анотаціями, я чекала історію кохання між британцем та француженкою на тлі Першої Світової Війни. Зараз поділюся враженнями від того, що я отримала.

Події роману починаються у французькому місті Ам'єн на початку минулого століття. Англієць Стівен Рейзфорд приїжджає сюди за роботою і знайомиться з Ізабель Азер - дружиною власника фабрики. Достатньо очікувано, що між ними зав'язуються стосунки - і з цього починаються основні події книги. Чесно кажучи, любовна лінія у "Пташиному співі" просто паскудна. Відверто паскудна. Жахливо паскудна. Герої схильні до настільки невмотивованих вчинків, що лише приблизно нагадують живих людей.

Розділи, де описуються воєнні події, зачепили мене куди більше. Навіть надто глибоко. Я небагато знаю про Першу Світову Війну навіть у порівнянні з війною 1812 року, тож мене вразило. У Себастьяна Фолкса вийшло настільки добре прописати образи солдатів, відчуття того жаху і байдужості, того болю за мертвих друзів і загального горя, що у мене аж мурашки йшли по шкірі. Невже, цей же письменник так невдало міг писати про мирне життя? Відкриттям для мене стало існування "тунельних військ". Виявляється, британці та німці постійно намагалися підкопатися один під одного, аби закласти вибухівку. На такі роботи йшли будівельники метро, інженери тощо. Мені стає погано від одніє думки, що люди могли вигрібати тонни землі, проробляючи тунелі, проводячі цілі дні під землею. Дуже часто британські та німецькі тунелі перетиналася, траплялися сутички, вибухали снаряди - і тоді тунелі ставали для своїх творців домовинами.

"Прізвища скоромовкою звучали в сутінках і летіли до тих місць, де народилися ці солдати. У села та міста, куди невдовзі підуть телеграми, у будинки, де скоро опустять штори і де крізь зачинені двері полине низький стогін. У місця, які їх породили, а тепер стануть більше схожими на жіночі монастирі. У мертві міста, де не буде життя, не буде цілі. У міста без батьків та дітей, без молодиків на фабриках, без чоловіків у жінок, без дітей, які могли би народитися, могли би вирости, могли би працювати та малювати, могли би навіть керувати державою, — але вони так і залишаться не зачатими у розірваних тілах батьків, які лежать тепер у смердючих воронках на бурякових полях. Ці чоловіки пішли з дому тільки для того, щоби перетворитися із живої плоті на гранітні плити. На них байдуже зеленітимуть мох та лишайник."

Сильно псує книгу її фінал. Трохи заспойлерю - там описується сцена пологів, але, як на мій погляд, описується настільки "дивно", що я не вірю в неї ще більше, ніж в кохання між головними персонажами. Загадкою для мене лишилася назва "Пташиний спів" - тобто, в процесі читання роману я натикалася на ті моменти, що Стівен боїться птахів, але в ніяку більш-менш зрозумілу мені концепцію це не вилилося.

Забагато суперечностей в цій книзі, є щось затягнуте, недоговорене, картонні персонажі, але дуже правдоподібна війна. Специфічно.

Finishing this book is something like being dug out of a shell hole, or emerging from sleep still in the grip of one's nightmare. Faulks did a shatteringly good job of conveying the sheer incomprehensible horror of the trenches and mines. He was equally adept at blind, headlong, addictive physical passion. What kept this novel from five stars was the 1978-1979 material about Elizabeth Benson. While the snippet of her at Thiepval is moving, I get no sense of promises kept or the torch being passed from her life, pregnancy and delivery. I'm not even sure a device to connect past and present generations is necessary.

BBC did a very good radio dramatization of this in 1997 featuring Toby Stephens as Stephen Wraysford. Well worth a listen, and tellingly, the man who adapted it for radio chose to leave out a goodly part of the Elizabeth Benson storyline.

Slow to start...104 pages of character and setting.
Then the war started...it was told in such a manner that you felt you were there. My skin, itched with lice and I felt cold and hungry.
I was not aware of the WW1 history, of the tunneling and the death of hundreds at a time...800 men in the battalion - 155 survived the first battle. They kept fighting ..."I think it is for those who have died. Not for the living at home. For the dead over here."

I really liked Jack Firebrace...a dedicated husband, father and friend.

The quote from the book that made me ponder...from Stephen..."Which human being out of all those you have met would you choose to hold your hand, to hold close to you in beginning of eternity?"

There is something odd about the structure of 'Birdsong'. It centres around the experiences of Stephen Wraysford before and during the First World War, yet there is also a sort of framing storyline in the form of his granddaughter researching him. The latter I found rather ineffective, as it was only at the very end that it confirmed some information about Stephen that wasn’t provided by his own narration. On the other hand, Stephen himself was an excellent character and his story was incredibly well told and (as befits WWI stories) traumatically horrible. The trenches and the tunnels beneath them are vividly evoked, in fact the tunnel sequences gave me unpleasant flashbacks to Germinal’s mines. Although it took a little while to become engrossing, I appreciated the initial section set in 1910, as it demonstrated how Victorian life still was then and provided a sharp contrast to the world at war.

I am torn about giving this book three stars or four. I think on balance I must give it four, as the account of trench warfare is so well told. I initially inclined towards three because this account is uncomfortable to read - as it should be! Stephen and others repeatedly state that the situation in which they find themselves is beyond endurance, beyond anything humans have suffered before, and surpasses belief. Thus fiction that can communicate some measure of that horror is important. It isn’t fun to read, though, and I imagine this book is especially unpleasant if you are subject to claustrophobia. I don’t think the 1970s sections were really necessary, but cannot deny that they were well written.

It was also helpful to realise whilst reading ‘Birdsong’ that, if I want to read cheering and distracting books to relax after writing my thesis all day, I would do well to avoid anything to do with the First World War.

This was my second reading of Birdsong, and I expected to be less stunned, less appalled, and less involved in this masterpiece of a novel. I couldn't have been more wrong. Even on second reading, Birdsong retains huge power as a novel. It serves as a hugely important reminder of the near past, of the sacrifices that were made by our very close ancestors to preserve our way of life. It's full of passion, of the resilience of human nature, and the depths that humanity can dredge in times of war.

The main character is Stephen Wraysford, and the story starts by him embarking on a passionate affair with the Mistress of the house he comes to stay at in Northern France, just before the First World War. What follows is a novel that crosses decades and continents, depicting the vital importance of our history to modern day living. It's alternately devastating and optimistic. What stands out to me the most is the contrast between the war the young men experienced in the fields of France and Belgium, in comparison to everyone "doing their bit," back home. The effective creation of an entire generation of lost young men, who's lives would never recover from the dreadful things they witnessed in the course of battle is truly devastating. Books like this need to be read, these men need to be remembered, and Birdsong should be on every school reading list. It's vital, magnificient, and human. Read it.

Beautifully written. As the subtitle indicates, this is a "A Novel of Love and War". The part about THE war, I have to admit I had very little knowledge of WWI before I read this book, except for the bare minimum of how it started and how a great many young men died in the war. I also don't normally read books with many battle scenes and with war as the main theme, but once I started reading this one, I just couldn't put it down until I reached the last page. What moved me most was the detailed description of the tension in the anticipation of the attacks(i.e., Battle of the Somme), the horror of being trapped in tunnels thirty feet underground in no man's land, and the psychological effect of the sheer brutality of the war on the soldiers, which were unimaginable and devastating to say the least. I was on the verge of tears a few times! The last chapter about the war was this truly remarkable story of endurance, bravery, survival and humanity that would bring you down to your knees. I also found the parts about tunnel digging very interesting to read as well, believe it or not. It gives you a good sense of how part of the war was fought on both sides.

The part about love was also very well done. Now I see why Faulks was commissioned to write Devil May Care as Ian Fleming. Some passages in the first part of the novel were so sensual that I almost couldn't believe a man actually wrote it.

When I finished this I was in a towel, laying on a bed in Porto Santo. The fan was whirring and my brother was in the shower. It was one of those times when you feel so oppressed by the heat that you don't want to move and I figured as long as I was in a towel and still wet, I would be cooler, to some degree. So, I picked up Birdsong and finished it.

It was my dad who recommended it to me, and all the way through the book I was wondering why he loved it so much. It was good, well written and War has always interested me as a subject but I wasn't as mind-blown as I was expecting. But then, lying on the bed in a towel under the fan and listening to the shower pouring into the tub, I put it down and felt crushed. Physically crushed as if a great weight was suddenly dropped onto my shoulders, like I was swinging a bag full of rocks onto my back and it was the first time I felt like I had to stay still and silent for a moment to recover from the power of a book. That's why it has my five stars.

I N T E N S E. Incredible read. I’m not a big war story guy, but Faulks tricked me, pulling me into a beautiful love story with authentic characters and normal problems and then dropped a war into the middle of it. The vivid descriptions of trench and tunnel warfare made me have to put it down and get up and walk around, but pulled me right back in; I couldn’t stay away. Somehow these characters from a hundred years ago experiencing the best and worst that life had to offer were so incredibly relatable, I found myself rooting for almost every single person in the book. This was an incredible analysis of the human experience through the highest of highs and the lowest of lows that anyone could know; watching it all from inside the minds of these people was so eloquent and enlightening and insightful and devastating. Incredible read.