A hundred years have passed after World War I, one of the biggest atrocities in our history. The last surviving veteran passed away two years ago, taking the last living memory of those horrible years along with her. It is now up to us to keep alive the memories of those who have endured the war and of those who have not. It is up to us to remember. It is up to us to keep history from repeating itself.

"Birdsong" by Sebastian Faulks was my personal choice to commemorate the 100th anniversary of World War I. The book follows the life of a young Briton Stephen, whom we meet in France, first on a work mission, and years later on a totally different mission in the midst of WWI. The book jumps back and forth in time, taking us to late 70’s as well, where we meet Stephen’s granddaughter Elizabeth in her late thirties. Never having known her grandfather, who had died before she was born, she decides to learn as much as possible about him and goes on a strange quest in search of the lost memories.

Although I had mixed feelings about the book, the main reason being my inability to connect emotionally to its characters, I think that it definitely fulfilled the mission I assigned to it. It taught me things about WWI I was not aware about, even though historical fiction and wars were receiving a lot of my attention lately. It made me look for more information about the war and convinced me at the same time that France deserves another visit of mine, this time to places such as Thiepval or Amiens. It also made me ask myself if normality can ever be restored after one has experienced a war.

“It was not his death that mattered; it was the way the world had been dislocated. It was not all the tens of thousands of deaths that mattered; it was the way they had proved that you could be a human yet act in a way that was beyond nature.”

Does the war ever stop for those who have been part of it? Is it possible return and quietly accept that life continues like nothing ever happened behind the front line, accept the lack of intensity, accept that nobody who has not lived such experience will ever understand their eternal grief, their fear to befriend anybody lest they die tomorrow, their war induced hatred to people they have never met in their lives, their guilt of surviving when others are gone?

“No child or future generation will ever know what this was like. They will never understand.
When it 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.”

Although I found the characters a little too shallow and underdeveloped for my taste, and was a little bit annoyed by the patronizing tone and the author trying to explain every detail of some almost self-explanatory things, the book still managed to touch me in other ways, and thus my four stars. Let us keep those memories alive.

Різні часові проміжки. Перша світова. Кохання і війна, але війни все ж в рази більше.

Любовна лінія (часом навіть відверто сексуальна) неочікувано зачепила мене більше, ніж воєнна. І мені здається, що проблема була в героях. В любовній зав’язці (1910 рік) героїв не багато, тож встигаєш до них прив’язатися. Натомість воєнний 1916-ий одразу кидає тебе у вир битви, з героями якої ти здебільшого не знайомий. Зрештою та швидкість, з якою вони помирають, також не дає можливості полюбити їх сильніше. В подальшому автор ще перекине нас на 1978-ий і знадобиться час, аби зрозуміти навіщо.
Війна тут зовсім не романтична, якщо тільки ви вважаєте такою усі цю кишково-мозкову палітру битв. Підкопи, тунелі, закладання вибухівки під землею під час війни - не аж так широко висвітлена в літературі тема і я, чесно кажучи, нічого про це не знала. Тож у кого є страх штолень, печер чи фобія бути похованим заживо, то ця книжка добряче зіграє на ваших нервах.

I do like a proper war book, where the soldiers are real men and not action heroes. However, any war story must be measured against "All Quiet On The Western Front" and few can match up.

This book starts with a romance in France in 1910, which is a nice idea as it grounds the protagonist before we see him again in the trenches. The romance takes up 100 pages, or a quarter of the book, and was a bit long for me. Then the romance ends and I never understood why, nor did the protagonist.

The war stuff is all very real and the author tries very hard to understand war. which is quite difficult since it is such a ridiculous concept. ie: The protagonist is interested to see what will happen, and wonders, as we all do, how so many men can be persuaded to kill each other for so long.

By that he means, you might be able to stir young men up with thoughts of conquest or of protecting your own country, but once the initial hysteria is over, how do you keep it going?

When all a soldier can see is that himself and his friends are risking their lives and dying horribly every day, what does it take to stop fighting?

The answer is that they don't. Each new horror is faced and overcome and people adapt to the hell and keep on fighting.

The author isn't referring to individuals refusing to fight, they would simply be shot; but if both armies just stopped, there is nothing the politicians, Kaisers, Kings or Queens could do.

The protagonist is an interesting character and his story in the trenches is well worth reading.

In summary, it was a bit overlong and repetitive. The jump forward to 1978 was unnecessary and quite dull.

I have quite mixed feelings about this book. While I found the sections on the war proper quite devastating and very well done, I also found the framing device of the pre-war romance and more present day life far less effective and also less well written. My feelings may also be affected to some extent by other World War I literature that I have been reading as part of the Centennial over the past few months.

I found that the frame story, actually a dual frame, diminished the war story tremendously. In fact I wondered, prior to the war story beginning, whether I would want to complete reading the book.

I've read so many excellent books with the WWI group that did not bother with that kind of tacked on romance, etc. It's simply not necessary. And Faulk certainly demonstrated the skill to write a full book without it. This made me wonder whether he may not have trusted his audience to come to the book. But then I see how many others give this book top ratings and realize that I am out of sync with the majority on this book. But I have no problem with that. I was simply quite surprised when I read the it as my expectations were much different!!

n  n
One of the Burberry Boys, Eddie Redmayne of the bruised looking lips as Stephen Wraysford in the new BBC film.



Sebastian Faulks’ epic love story set against the First World War, which became a modern classic when it was published in 1993, is adapted for the screen for the first time by Abi Morgan.

The action of the two part serial moves between 1910 and 1916, telling the story of Stephen Wraysford, a young Englishman who arrives in Amiens in Northern France to stay with the Azaire family and falls desperately in love with Isabelle Azaire. They begin an illicit and all-consuming affair, but the relationship falters.

Years later, Stephen finds himself serving on the Western Front in the very area where he experienced his great love. As he battles amidst the blood and gore of the trenches he meets Jack Firebrace, a tunneller who unexpectedly helps him endure the ravages of war and enables him to make peace with his feelings for Isabelle.

After part the second I am not sure what the point of this was. Lots of pretty pictures of pretty boys and girls and shocking pictures of WW1 trenches. Sigh. Whatever.

I received a stark warning before I even picked this book out to read. I was informed it was a difficult read, and I would fall in love with it. That person has never been more correct in their life.
Faulks has created a poignant and epic love story, set in the absolute atrocities of the first world war. The scenes in the trenches are truly horrific and they tell the reader the very depths of human despair. I had to pause after a couple of these such scenes, just to let what I had just read, sink in.
This book contains probably the most raw accounts of war, that I have ever read. This is beautifully and skillfully balanced out with a romantic story, which I didn't think I would love as much as I have.

The last sixty pages of this book were exhausting, tense, and to be honest, I found I was not dry eyed by the time I'd finished. I just didn't want this book to finish. My poor heart is literally aching, and I most definitely need to rest it. Five stars is simply not enough for this literary masterpiece.

warning: this review contains anger, copious swearing, and discussion of rape and misogyny.

whenever anyone asks me what my least favourite book is, i always say this, which seems odd considering it's been voted as the 100 best books on a bbc list or whatever it was.

usually, when i study a book, my appreciation and enjoyment of it multiplies tenfold. take, for example, the great gatsby, which i had liked previously but became one of my favourite books of all time when i began to study it.

now this... thing.

i don't understand why it has so much critical acclaim, i don't understand why i'm studying it at A Level, and i don't understand why it's one of the nation's favourite novels. n  i don't understand.n

the novel opens before the war, and stephen has an affair with isabelle. although isabelle does consent, there are some really rapey and misogynistic undertones that make me highly uncomfortable and i have no fucking idea why faulks decided to include them. choice extracts include:

"The force that drove through him could not be stopped. The part of his mind that remained calm accepted this; if the necessity could not be denied, then the question was only whether it could be achieved with her consent."

"The more she imagined the degradation of her false modesty the more she felt excited.

false modesty????? isabelle's initial denial is "false modesty"?!?!?! i'm going to be sick. oh, and not only are the sex scenes misogynistic as fuck, they're also terribly written. like, honestly, they've practically turned me fully-fledged Gay.

"turning like a key in the split lock of her flesh"

ummmm?? ouch?? not to mention how that also has misogynistic undertones tbh of being Unlocked by sex, can faulks Stop. how much do i have to pay to get him to Stop

ok now the rest. i was completely Bored for the entire novel, and isabelle and stephen's storyline is repeated in elizabeth and whatever the fuck her lover's name is, i can't remember. that is how much i care. now, supposedly this mirroring is supposed to Show The Interconnection Between The Past And Present And Future but to me it just seemed like faulks ran out of fucking ideas.

elizabeth is honestly such an irritating character. "wow i just realised the war was bad!!!" fuck off liz.

the only character i liked was that dude elizabeth works with who went to a restaurant, ordered solely wine, and lit a cigarette. Big Mood, and an Even Bigger Mood after reading this damn novel.

oh yeah and all the women want children??? literally all of them??? excuse me but having children is not the be all and end all of womanhood.

also: it seems the be all and end all of manhood is having sex. one of the soldiers is a virgin and he's fine with it but stephen is all "you are Incomplete you must go to a brothel" and the soldier doesn't want to but stephen makes him?? which is rape (AGAIN!!). oh, and at this brothel stephen pulls a knife out on a prostitute, and the prostitute.... holds his hand afterwards?????? fuck that shit bruv i don't care if he's a Damaged Soldier With Psychological Pain no man's gonna pull out a knife on me like that, the fuck?? many soldiers have ptsd and do not feel the urge to wave knives at prostitutes, fuck off faulks. thanks for perpetuating the mental illness makes you violent myth.

tl dr; a literary trainwreck, -100000/10, would not recommend.

n  "It was not his death that mattered; it was the way the world had been dislocated. It was not all the tens of thousands of deaths that mattered; it was the way they had proved that you could be human yet act in a way that was beyond nature."n

This ‘review’ might sound like a huge cliché, and for that I apologise. What I don’t apologise for is the sentiments behind it because I mean every word.
I approached this book, the third time I have read it, with extreme caution. I felt like I was meeting up with friends that I hadn’t seen for a while. Situations had changed, circumstances had changed and, perhaps most importantly, my reading tastes had changed.
Like many people who chose to take English Literature as an A-Level, I was told that I should read this for my War Literature Module. I’ve had bad experience with course books, experiences that started in high school and stretched right up until I graduated university. So I was sceptical to say the least.
But Birdsong was different.
I truly connected with this book, the story, the writing but, most of all, the characters.
So when I decided to re-read it, I was nervous. Would Stephen be as damaged but heroic as I remembered him? Will Weir still make me ache with sadness? Would Jack still make me cry with laughter… and then overwhelm me with emotion? Will Jeanne still garner my utmost respect? Would Isabelle still make me feel conflicted until the very last page?

The answer to all these questions is ‘yes’.
There are four parts in this book that I will always remember.
And I know people who are reading this will be like… woah spoilers, but that’s the thing. If you know anything about the war, whether it’s due to an interest in history, you’ve read books, you’ve listened to your grandparent’s talking about it… you know that this actually happened.
I wish there was a spoiler tag for history but, unfortunately, there isn’t.
(But if you want to know nothing about this book… please skip this next part.)

The first is the part where Stephen is reading the letters in the trenches. This bit is so raw with emotion that my heart physically ached. The letter that I seem to have remembered most vividly is Tipper’s, a relatively minor character. At first you might think that him writing things such as “It’s a terrific show” and “Our guns are putting on a display like Firework Night. We are going to attack and we can’t wait to let Fritz have it” is down to youthful enthusiasm and ignorance. He’s new to the war and he’s never been over the top before, so he doesn’t know what to expect. But really these frivolous words are because he’s afraid but doesn’t want his parents, who are seeing the war through the newspapers alone, to know the truth.
The second scene is Weir’s visit back home. His father’s conversation with him, dismissing his son’s cry for help because he knows, was unfortunately something that happened often. And not just on the British side, in All Quiet on the Western Front there is a particularly poignant scene where Paul visits home and realises that everything has stayed the same, but completely incomprehensible to someone who has seen what he has seen.
The third part is where the soldiers are require to venture back into No Man’s Land and collect the bodies of their dead. This scene, which is difficult to stomach seeing as Faulk’s can perfectly describe the state of a body who has been left to the elements for two weeks, was unbearably haunting. My heart bled, and continues to bleed, for Brennan.
And the fourth was the one of the last scenes with Stephen in the mines. With the aid of Faulks’ writing, I could feel the hammering of Stephen’s heart, his desperation, his hope fading, his desire to live and the grime beneath my finger nails.
What I love the most about this book and perhaps why I’ve read it so many times and will continue to read it again and again is how Mr Faulks portrays the human spirit when humanity has been completely deserted.
Birdsong is a shocking book and there are many passages that made me feel sick to my stomach, angry and so sad that I had to actually stop reading and do something else for a while. It is difficult to read this book and not get immersed in it.
Yes, you might get bored with the love story (and don’t forget that shocking and explicit part where people have sex! Shock, horror) and yes you might get a bit bored with Elizabeth’s story line (I actually love that bit… I find it extremely honest and realistic), but there is no denying that the parts in the trenches with Stephen, Weir, Firebrace and the rest of the men are nothing short of astounding.

n  ”He wanted it louder and louder; he wanted them to drown out the war with their laughter. If they could shout loud enough, they might bring the world back to its senses; they might laugh loud enough to raise the dead.”n

This review is part of my Poppies & Prose feature. You can read more about it here.

Perhaps the best description of the horrors—and the toll in human lives—of the trench warfare of the First World War I’ve ever read. This admirable historical fiction first takes the young Englishman Stephen Wraysford to Amiens in 1910 to learn more about the textile trade, where he has a passionate affair that keeps him in France until the outbreak of hostilities, when he enlists as an English soldier and is sent to the Belgian trenches as a member of the British Expeditionary Force. The death toll is stupefying, and Stephen is given a field commission and finds himself leading men to slaughter. All around him everyone he knows is killed, and he experiences extreme emotional numbness as he leads heart-breakingly pointless attacks and waits for his own death. These affecting chapters are interwoven with others set in 1978 London, in which his granddaughter, who he never met, curious about this mysterious figure and wishing to learn whatever she can about him, stumbles upon a cache of his wartime diaries. Very emotionally resonant.

3.5*

It's as if the author is writing from personal experience.

The way that the characters and the atmosphere are built by Sebastian Faulks is just amazing! The reader is taken in to that atmosphere, and shares the feelings of the main character, Stephen. You cannot fail to be totally captivated.

Anyone who has served for any significant period in the Armed Forces will instantly relate to the use of black humour to cover the awful reality and horror. Faulks also manages to reflect on how every aspect of life continues, perhaps in the background, as the war goes on. There is a strong and emotive love story. There is a very powerful understanding of the futility of war and its effects on everyone involved, regardless of national allegiance. One of the most poignant parts of the book, for me, is the description of the feelings of the sappers as they tunnel deep below the battlefield, knowing that their counterparts are experiencing the same hopes and fears, only feet away through the awful mud and darkness. Death is never more than a split second away.

Note: It makes it even more personal to me as I was in the Royal Engineers (Sappers) during my military career. I'm happy to report, though, that I never had to get involved in the activity of sapping, or tunnelling.

Having had the privilege of sitting with Somme veterans, listening to their vivid memories of the trenches and the contacts, and those friends who lost their lives, I can say, with great confidence, that the superb writing of Birdsong takes us as close to being there as is possible.

A scene which, some may say, in the greater scheme of the whole book pales into insignificance but is still very well worth mentioning, is the extremely erotic, yet tastefully presented, first sexual encounter between Stephen and Isabelle, which occurs early on in the story. There are other encounters throughout the book, but I found this to be one of the most sexually arousing pieces of writing that I have ever read. It omits just the right amount of detail to allow the reader's imagination to run riot. Amazing!

Every emotion is touched during the reading of this book.

The title is evocative. I found several reasons to entitle the book this way, not least Stephen's declaration regarding his feelings about birds and the reasons behind those feelings. When you read the book, keep the title in your mind. Seeking the meaning adds an extra dimension to your reading.

It is a shame that it is not possible to award six stars to any book that I review, for Birdsong would surely deserve such an award. This one definitely makes it into my lifetime favourite five.

I would have no hesitation in recommending Birdsong to absolutely anyone, but most especially to any politician who is thinking about sending young people to their deaths in war.

Footnote: I was surprised that The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann featured in Sebastian Faulks's top one hundred books. It sits right at the opposite end of the gripping to boring spectrum of reading to this magnificent work: Birdsong is gripping.

(This review isn't really a review at all, but a note for me to remember my experience of reading Birdsong.)

This novel was a real mixbag for me. By the end of part one (Birdsong is presented in seven distinct parts) I was really rather fed up and ready to DNF. However, I decided to carry on into part two for a chapter to see if the outbreak of the war made a difference and it did- I was really beginning to enjoy the story. As well as the better story, Faulks had a way of bringing the trenches, the mines, and the Somme to life, with passages that I will never forget.

"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."

After this section, I didn't really enjoy Birdsong again until part six, when Stephen and Jack were trapped under No Man's Land, and Stephen was rescued by German soldiers. I can't really explain these differing experiences to what I was reading, but they were there. Perhaps the modernish story was less appealing, as it was not a story arc I was expecting to read.

Birdsong was recommended to me by several people, and perhaps I expected a bit too much. I really enjoyed some of it, and could even offer five stars for part two alone, but on the other hand I can't ignore that I was bored by other parts. I'm glad I read Birdsong, but will probably never read it again.