Birdsong? More like Birdshit. I may have given this book one star, but I really give it 20 piles of steaming birdshit.

I can't even contain the hatred I feel for this one. It's just horrible. Everything and I mean everything about it, is just horrible.

It starts off as a supposed love story between a young Englishman Stephen Wraysford and some French harlot named Isabelle. But it's not a love story, it's a fuck story that includes bastard children, betrayal and whole lot of boring WWI shit thrown in.

After skimming through it just to finish it, my reaction was so strong that I threw it across the room and scared the shit out of my cats.

I don't normally review but this book is a misogynist piece of crap.
The female characters are stereotypical approximations of what men imagine women to be. Isabelle magically knows how to give blow-jobs, driven by an "inherent" knowledge not born of practice but from a need to be "tidy". Delightful image.
The portrayal of life in the trenches as well as the emotional, physical and psychological degeneration of the male main male characters is more or less well done, but the comparison to Remarque and Hemingway is a bit far fetched.
Ultimately the novel is a load of crap highlighting the struggles of men during WW1 and the lasting effects (although mostly unknown and unrealized) it had on British society. It completely devalues women and goes on and on about how bad men felt.
EUGH.
Read Hemingway or Remarque. Leave this.

Birdsong is a story about so many things that writing a review is difficult. The parts interconnect but they are also very different. However, The World War 1 aspect definitely dominates the book with incredible realism and great prose.

The first 100 or so pages tell a story about attraction and passion. Two strangers meet and are swept away – one by the aliveness of the other, one by the attention of the other. Two strangers physically lust after each other and can’t get enough of each other. Two strangers forsake others and run away together. One stranger seems to truly love the other, at least on a superficial level. It is his first sexual experience. The other seems to be seeking escape from an abusive, boring and unfulfilling relationship. She really didn’t seem genuinely interested in starting anew or trying again.

Many reviewers were full of praises for the description of the sensual nature of the relationship. I agree that there seemed to be a great deal of physical attraction and passion but it seemed to be more about lust, physical obsession and emotional need than sensual. I thought it dragged at times and found myself often putting the book down and was not really able to “get into” the book.

The World War 1 story was a different matter. Despite having read a number of World War 11 stories, this was the first World War 1 story I have read. The author’s detail and writing was so descriptive and so real that I had a great deal of difficulty reading it – to the point that I put the book down for a while and considered not finishing the book. This time, putting down the book was due to great writing. The author’s describes trench warfare in such detail and with so much realism, that I could smell the dirt in the tunnels, imagine myself crawling in tunnels so small that one couldn’t turn and got myself worked up into a claustrophobic state. I confess small spaces have never really been my thing but I thought I got over this many years ago. The author describes the diggers crawling on their backs, unable to turn because the space was so small. They are crawling only a few feet below the enemy above, often clawing inches at a time to make the tunnels longer, listening constantly for sounds of the enemy in a tunnel or battlefield above. I could feel the dirt and the dampness. I felt the earth in my pores and my heart beat faster with the fear of earth collapsing all around me. The prose was very powerful.

Digging the trenches was not the only topic that the author wrote about so well. Sebastian Faulk writes incredibly lyrically and descriptively throughout this book, be it about war, feelings, thoughts, the countryside, birds and animals or relationships. I now understand why he has been given so many accolades for his literary writing style and for Birdsong in particular.

In addition to the physical horrors of war, much of the book is character description. The author delves into the psychological challenges that the war participants faced. The characters are incredibly well described and reflect a wide continuum, likely a representative cross-section of the real soldiers in World War 1. Some were cerebral and turned off emotions, some turned to the bottle for solace and numbing, others were salt of the earth and camaraderie was their release. Each man (at the time no woman participated in combat) dealt with the war in his own way. Most of the men wanted to help their country but nearly all of them had no way of emotionally or spiritually dealing with the atrocities they witnessed. Even the killing of enemy soldiers was an assault on their psyches, never mind the slaughter and degradation of their peers as they stood beside them. The prose is so good and the deaths described in such real terms that they seem to be happening as you read the book. The pain of the soldiers is tragic and very palpable. The more I read, the more I felt and the more I understood viscerally the senseless tragedy and carnage of body and spirit caused by war.

Many men die physically. Many die emotionally. Only a few survive spiritually. The wide swath of damage was brought home again and again in Birdsong. The philosophy of life and death and surviving such brutality is an underlying theme of the book. The author really makes one think and the book has stayed with me long after finishing the last page – a true sign of a classic book that is worthy of 5 stars and well worth rereading.

Ik kan er een lang of kort verhaal over houden, maar dit is écht een van de beste boeken ooit:
'Het lied van de loopgraven' van Sebastian Faulks.
Van een hartstochtelijke buitenechtelijke relatie naar de wrede en rauwe werkelijkheid aan het Eerste Wereldoorlogfront naar een verhaallijn van een vrouw in 1978. Even vergat ik het hete strand om me heen en bevond ik me in de gangen onder de loopgraven waar de mineurs hun eigen oorlog uitvochten.

Het is lastig de schrijfstijl van Faulks uit te leggen, je moet het ervaren. Een van zijn andere boeken, 'Waar mijn hart ooit klopte', is eveneens een aanrader.
In 2012 is door de BBC een tweedelig tv-programma gemaakt met de Engelstalige naam: Birdsong.

4.5 I lived and breathed WW1. I cried and felt the angst and guilt and indifference. I almost stopped breathing for the ten days I spent reading. I couldn´t read too much each day because the reading took its toll. Gut wrenching. But so fabulously told. I am speechless. This was the reality for boys and men in the napoleon wars and ww1. A whole lost generation. I am so grateful that Faulks wrote this book. I will think about it every time I hear birdsong. It is not perfect, but it is a very, very good book. Do read it!

Mostly about War. WWI. The trenches. Devastating in it’s brutality.
This is the story of Stephan Wraysford. Finding passionate love in Amiens, France. And shortly afterwards getting engulfed in the horrors of the trenches.

Vividly depicted by Faulks.

What is it about WWI, that keeps on attracting readers? Including me! We all know how it went. The atrocities that happened. The total disregard of the so called leaders for their man. Lives destroyed. People lied to. It would be over in months. Etc, etc.
It’s a macabre curiosity, really. Why? I’m still not sure.

Part One. France 1910.
Amiens. The Somme. Still peacefull. The backdrop of a stormy tempestuous love. We know that the horrors of WWI are looming. But that comes later. For now we follow the emotions of Stephen and Isabelle as they fall passionate in love. And bear the consequences.

Part Two. France 1916.
Stephen in the trenches. The horror can best be described by snippets of thoughts and conversation as the man are under constant shelling;
p.143: About what life in the trenches does to ones emotions: ”This eruption of natural fear brought home how unnatural was the existence they were leading; they did not wish to be reminded of normality.”
p.145: “This is not a war, this is an exploration of how far man can be degraded.”
We follow several other man as they cope with the horrors. There are graphic descriptions of mutilated human beings. The constant fear of the shelling. The next one could be the one for you. And somehow they cope with it all. Well, they did not have much choice. Most volunteered and going away meant desertion and if captured; certain death before the firing squad.

It’s astonishing how they still thought in 1916, that bombardments would help before an attack. Had they learned nothing in the last two years? I can’t imagine how a six day constant shelling would make one feel. The immense destructive force unleashed. Noise everywhere. I know, in hindsight it’s easy to judge. I’m still getting extremely mad at those politicians and generals who send millions of young man to their death. For what? Satisfy greed and power. Self-aggrandizing seemed more important than the life of their man. For the glory of the country. Sure. For that reason many wars were faught and many lives destroyed.
In my review of Erich Maria Remarque’s masterpiece: All quiet on the Western Front I already fumed about the ”horrendous stupidy of war”. So I’ll refrain from it here. But I feel the same anger as I felt then.

The description of the 1916 battle at the Somme near Albert, France, thru Stephen’s eyes, is horrifyingly graphic and way beyond comprehension. I read it in disbelief. Those poor guys: ”Stephen watched the packets of lives with their memories and loves go spinning and vomiting into the ground.” We all know the infinite number of people dying in those meaningless attacks. And for years they went on and on…

Part Three. England 1978.
About how Elizabeth goes on a quest what happened with her grandparents. How she discovered what really happened in WWI. She had no clue. Which is astonishing to me. But then I’m a huge history buff. She went to Albert, France. Where Stephen fought in one of tbe battles of the Somme. It’s humbling to find out how many missing soldiers there are in these battles of the Somme: The Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme is a war memorial to 72,337 (!!) missing British and South African servicemen who died in the Battles of the Somme between 1915 and 1918, with no known grave. In the carnage of the shelling and machine gun fire they just disappeared…

Part Four. France 1917.
Back in the trenches.
People back home are unable to understand what it really is, this useless trench war. Ellis, a newbie, is still in the mindset that he fights for glory and country. Stephen fights for his fallen comrades. The ones that are gone.

By now I reviewed enough.
And the war goes on and Stephen gets more and more depressed.
And I became more and more sad reading on. Stephen, as exemplary for most soldiers I’m sure, becomes numb. There are just too many losses. Comrades dead. At home, nobody seems to care. Nobody really understands what they are going thru. They are alone.

Elizabeth keeps on investigating who her grandfather was.
We read an entry in Stephan’s diary which finishes in a devastating and heartbreaking way. The realization what all soldiers must have felt I’m sure:
”No child or future generation will ever know what this was like.
They will never understand.
When this is over we will go quietly among the living and we will not tell them.
We will talk and sleep and go about our business like human beings.
We will seal what we have seen in the silence of our hearts and no words will reach us.”
It reads like a poem. The tragedy of returning soldiers from wars.

The book does end with hope though. Of human resilience and understanding. But the overall feeling stays with me of sadness for all the suffering these people went through and stayed with them all their lives.

And still wars go on…


written: 1993.
Sebastian Faulks: 1953 -

So much to think about in this book—the horrors of war, the importance of remembering history, and the power of love and hate. The author’s ability to bring you into the trenches, with the mud, lice, and constant danger, was something that will make this book stay with me.

An engaging book about love and war - and not the nice, good war of World War II - but the messy, bloody, and meaningless slaughter of World War I.

I found the war sections very engaging. But the sections from before and after World War I not so much. It also was not the most moving of World War I books I've read. (For instance, Sebastian Barry's A Long Long Way is much better in that respect.)

However, this book is excellent in highlighting the role of the sappers in WW I and the sheer psychological toll it took.

I read this as part of the 1001 Books to Read Before You Die challenge and I'm not really sure it belongs there.

Well I don’t think it was Sebastian Faulks’ fault.

Although he did win the Bad Sex Award in 1998 – not for this book but for Charlotte Gray –

Meanwhile her ears were filled with the sound of a soft but frantic gasping and it was some time before she identified it as her own. ..... "This is so wonderful I feel I might disintegrate, I might break into a million fragments."

And the sex in Birdsong comes quite close

It was his tongue, lambent, hot, flickering over and inside her, turning like a key in the split lock of her flesh...

This is all in the first 100 pages set in 1910. After that comes the brutal life in the trenches, where flesh is actually disintegrated into a million fragments. Life under constant shelling is described in excruciating detail. Any friend you made there, you had to be prepared to find him carved in two at any moment. Ghastly. Unthinkable.

But half way through Birdsong I found I had reached World War One saturation point. Previously I read Regeneration, The Return of the Soldier, Goodbye to All That and then histories such as The Guns of August, The Donkeys, The Vanquished and Forgotten Victory – these are all excellent books.

And last year I saw All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) – very moving – and an almost forgotten 1925 silent movie The Big Parade, Hollywood’s first major statement about World War One – also surprisingly great. Not to mention Paths of Glory and La Grand Illusion, and, more up to date, the stunning 1917.

I didn't realise it but I had had too much of World War One. So. This is probably a good book, 99% of all the other reviews say so. But you have to pick the right books at the right time.

A slightly embarrassed 3 stars from me.

This book tells the story of Stephen Wraysford and the events that shape his life during WWI, the Great War. Starting in pre-war France and moving on in time, it deals with Stephen's experiences in love and war. It begins in 1910 when Steven discovers his first love. It's not so much love, however, more a young man's lust idealized as love. And, that, sadly, was to be interrupted by war. It will provide much necessary yearning for the young Steven who goes off to that terrible war.

The battlefield scenes are very descriptive, making difficult reading at times, as the reader is engulfed in the trenches and tunnels as if witnessing the carnage and the brutalities of War first hand. Stephen loses more and more of his innocence and humanity, and looks upon death as expected rather than feared. As his humanity diminishes in the face of the horridness of battle and the claustrophobia of the tunnels he finally experiences a resurgence of the will to live. Life, however, will be far different than what he imagined before the war to end all wars.

The only part of the book I didn't like was, that after reading almost half of the the book set in WWI times, the story flashes forward to 1979 and Stephen's grandaughter and her search for information on her deceased grandfather. While there was some interesting aspects of her story, I felt like it just didn't belong.

The book, though, is an admirable novel of WWI of which there are too few. WWI truly should have been a warning for the future but sadly.....we now have drones and a supposedly sanitized way of war. I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in learning why we should abandon warfare.

This book was so hard to read. The graphic descriptions made me feel as though I was in the trenches with Stephen fighting the war to end all wars. Visualizations and emotions that I wish I had not known. This book is important, this book should be read, this book should be discussed, this book should come with a warning label - YOU MAY LOSE SLEEP DUE TO GRAPHIC CONTENT.

A short review can be found here and two passages from the book, below. Recommended.

n  The night poured down in waves from the ridge above them and the guns at last fell silent. The earth began to move. To their right a man who had lain still since the first attack, eased himself upright, then fell again when his damaged leg would not take his weight. Other single men moved, and began to come up like worms from their shellholes, limping, crawling, dragging themselves out. Within minutes the hillside was seething with the movement of the wounded as they attempted to get themselves back to their line... It was like a resurrection in a cemetery twelve miles long. Bent, agonized shapes loomed in multitudes on the churned earth, limping and dragging back to reclaim their life. It was as though the land were disgorging a generation of crippled sleepers, each one distinct but related to its twisted brothers as they teemed up from the reluctant earth.n

n  

---------------------------------------

n

n  To begin with he asked after the whereabouts of each missing man. After a time he saw that it would take too long. Those who had survived were not always sure whom they had seen dead. They hung their heads in exhaustion, as though every organ of their bodies was begging for release. Price began to speed the process. He hurried from one unanswered name to the next. Byrne, Hunt, Jones, Tipper, Wood, Leslie, Barnes, Studd, Richardson, Savile, Thompson, Hodgson, Birkenshaw, Llewellyn, Francis, Arkwright, Duncan, Shea, Simons, Anderson, Blum, Fairbrother. Names came pattering into the dusk, bodying out the places of their forebears, the villages and towns where the telegrams would be delivered, the houses where the blinds would be drawn, where low moans would come in the afternoon behind closed doors; and the places that had borne them, which would be like nunneries, like dead towns without their life or purpose, without the sound of fathers and their children, without young men at the factories or in the fields, with no husbands for the women, no deep sound of voices in the inns, with the children who would have been born, who would have grown and worked or painted, even governed, left ungenerated in their fathers’ shattered flesh that lay in stinking shellholes in the beet-crop soil, leaving their homes to put up only granite slabs in place of living flesh, on whose inhuman surface the moss and lichen would cast their crawling green indifference. n