Birdsong: A Novel of Love and War

I was swept up in this book from the moment I started it. I didn’t know that much about it but a trusted source recommended it. I jumped in with both feet and got lost in it. It’s sensual and romantic, then heartbreakingly depressing as the story moves from a love affair in a French town to the battlefields of World War I. The writing pulls you along and you struggle with the hero every step of the way.Stephen Wraysford is the hero but he’s a bit of an anti-hero. He’s young and passionate. He’s weird and quiet. He loses his passion throughout the war but works hard to do his job, and job that would be difficult for most people to fathom performing unless they were there themselves. The author writes with such emotion and leads you to believe that he really was there on the battlefields and in the trenches. The dramatic tension is amped up by anyone who knows World War I history. The reader who knows which battles are coming up will be struck with a particular horror, knowing the ending before the characters do.I had a problem with the end of the book that keeps me from giving it five stars. And I really wanted to give it five stars. Not the ending itself; I’m satisfied with how the plot tied itself up. But the last couple of paragraphs. The point-of-view changed to a character that I don’t feel deserved it.For me, this was a summer read for lazy afternoons in the hot sun, but it’s definitely worth reading anytime. Love, war, and history, it will appeal to many.

I recommend reading 'Birdsong', but it will not suit some readers, particularly since it has what felt to me stapled on sections which will appeal to diametrically opposite genre fans. It consists of seven parts: 1910 France, 1978 England, 1917 France, 1978 England, 1918 France, 1979 England. It follows Stephen Wraysford and Elizabeth Benson - Wraysford in 1910-1918, Benson in 1978.First, the spice!It opens with a hot and heavy soft porn section, which might cause some sensitive Romance readers to be offended because the author dares to reveal the idea physical sex between adults involves genitals (graphically described); and some literary readers (like me) to feel the dialogue is terrible stuff, being unrealistic, exaggerated for dramatic effect, and too quickly intimate and candidly revealing for a developing love affair in an era of drawing room manners. It was a bit like, "Hi, I'm Isabelle Azaire. My husband is a boring lover and he is an old man of 40 that looks 50 with an aging body, but he is turning mean because he has decided our sex life is my fault and I'm bored with my life because I'm only 27 and although I love his children from a previous marriage it's not enough. Want a cup of tea?" "Hello, I'm Stephen Wraysford and I'm an 20-year-old impoverished ex-con with no education, skills, family or money. Want to run away with me? I know you are the one from the first second of meeting you. I'll love you forever." "How thrilling! You are the hottest thing in bed I've ever had! Let's go!" Although the writing about how Stephen and Isabelle relate to each other is pure soap opera stupid, the rest of '1910' is beautifully written. The Azaire family and their best friends are vividly drawn. Wraysford's innocence and passion are established, as well as the fact he is an honorable, normal youth whose indiscretions are based on his poverty and parentless upbringing.I found the first third of the novel tedious, a two-star grade at best. But most of the rest of of the book is five star, no reservations at all.Stephen was certainly in lust with Isabelle, he may even have been in love, fantasy driven as it was. (Men are much more basic when young - want eat now, want sleep now, want fast car now, want sex now... - ; ) If you satisfy their basic needs they will fall in actual love. For awhile.) It's a fortunate thing because this incident in his life sustains him through what may arguably be the worst modern war of the Western world, even understanding that every war is full of unspeakable horrors.Still with me? Sorry if that seemed harsh. I'm old, you know. Some of us turn sour after a lifetime of disappointments in human nature.War can add depth to a participant's understanding, or it can freeze everything in amber, like stopping time, so a war veteran might be a permanent 18-year old emotionally even when they are 50 years old. It can wipe out almost all emotion within a person, leaving behind only depression, misplaced rage and bad memories which overlay their lives forever. It can cause a permanent emotional numbing, a complete inability to enjoy or anticipate good things in the future. As psychology is well understood by the average Western citizen today, I know I don't need to really describe these responses to you. However, the why war survivors have these problems we usually tiptoe around, not wanting to explore whatever horrors caused a person's PTSD. This is not a lack of empathy or curiosity, this is self-preservation. Once war is fully experienced, whether in actual fact or only vicariously, it reduces the level of joy one can feel. Never again will the lightness of being that most children are born with will still be felt.If you wish to experience as vivid and realistic of a war as if you were there, in the trenches of WWI in this case, Sebastian Faulks could not make it happen any more real than he did in this novel unless he hooked up a virtual reality chip directly into your brain. Parts 1917/1918 are the most fantastic war writing I've ever read. It's incredibly awful and incredibly beautiful. The suffering, starving, lice and filth, the miles of walking and lack of sleep on poor quality food and very little water, the heat, the noise, the shocking deaths of friends inches from you, the blood and body parts - and it has no end, but continues for years and years. The pay is lousy and any second you could die, yet despite the continuous fear and stress, your brain must somehow be alert enough to do your job, when mostly all you want is to become dead without the pain. However, there is glory in knowing your fellow soldiers, their willing sacrifices for you, and the inexplicable bravery which is pulled out of you, as well as the amazing strengths you find you have in wanting to live when you had wanted to die a second before.It's all alive and real in the reading, as if you were Wraysford. He was not a fictional character while I read this. I was in his head, feeling his life.Whew! I will not be forgetting this book.Nineteen seventy-eight introduces us to a relative of the people we've been reading about in 1910, Elizabeth Benson. She is a modern woman of London and she has a mild desire for marriage because she would like to have kids. But she wavers at losing her independence. She has a great job and can support herself, which is possible because society no longer forces women to stay home. Her boyfriend is married with children and works in another country.A series of circumstances leads her to research WWI and her grandfather's service in France. She is almost completely unaware of the nature of war, but especially WWI is unknown to her. Her research becomes more determined as she realizes what an amazing thing it is what ordinary young men and boys went through, and never talked about if they survived, and what the war cost them in shortened lives and broken relationships, mostly unrecognized, unrewarded and forgotten.If this book consisted of the 1917-1918 sections alone, I would be jumping up and down, thrusting this novel into the hands of all my friends pleading with them to read this next, please. But it had the pasted up and unconvincing section of Isabelle's and Stephen's affair, which frankly, had me almost abandoning the book. Benson's sections were better, but I felt unnecessary to the story. In my opinion, I think this was a Great War Novel originally, but somewhere somehow a decision was made to increase its commercial value by adding a doomed love affair. Since the added-in affair and the genealogical search by a granddaughter seemed more of a naked play for literary readers who have been reading similar award-winning books with these same elements, instead of a heart-wrenching war story, I felt as if I were reading a clone, of lesser dimensions, of previous literary books built up with the same issues.The title Birdsong is very cool and very likely full of meaning. Actual birdsong is a delight to hear, sometimes achingly so. It can induce the same feelings that hearing a distant train can. I had fun when I finished the novel, while drying my tears after the last page, trying to figure out why this awful romance gorgeous war novel had been given this title. Feel free to offer suggestions."Wilt thou be gone? It is not yet near day.It was the nightingale, and not the larkThat pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear."

This beautifully conceived fiction is grounded in fact: it is the deep, explicit telling of the multitude of horrors of the battlefields (specifically, the Battle of the Somme) of the First World War, starting in 1916. The opening hundred pages, showing life as it was lived pre-war in 1910 (in France, by an Englishman), is no preparation for the start of the war, which is as it should be. There is no way to be ready for the wide range of death and destruction, of blood and severed limbs, of tunneling and guns, or of the males-only company that is the core of "Birdsong." There is a fine flow of the timing of mind-shaking horrors with some brief relief of pastoral description, short times away from the front, badinage between the men, and the main character's flitting memories of full-colored, blooming love and romance. The tone for the short-ish passages set sixty years after the war is—appropriately—more direct, to the point, in chiseled prose. It is, however, the unalloyed depiction, in detailed, vivid exposition, devastating range of the hideous experiences endured by each soldier that prevails, and makes one ask: how can any of these men who survived actually take up the quotidian life ever again?

WW1, this is the book for you. Faulks describes combat in a remarkably realistic way, and since sappers are critical to this story, much of the horror takes place in underground tunnels. Yet the book is disappointing in some ways. The first part describes a steamy romance in pre-war France between Isabelle, a married woman , and Stephen. Then, by and large, Isabelle is a forgotten character and that's too bad because much more could have been said about this bold woman torn betw love and commitment to an unhappy marriage. Most of the rest of the novel deals with Stephen's brutal combat experience in the war. The brief chapters from 1978, as Elizabeth discovers her grandfather, add a nice touch. Still, after a while, the combat gore gets to be too much and I craved more about the romance gone bad.

For a long time I have wanted to read this book and its reputation definitely precedes it. I have to admit, it took me a long time to get through its 500 pages, but only because the sheer gravity of what Faulks was communicating was immensely powerful. The novel is mainly from the perspective of Stephen Wraysford, an Englishman, who spends the years leading up to the first world war in France staying with the Azaire family, where he falls in love with a woman called Isabelle. The first half of the book is set in 1910, while the latter six parts swap between dates of the first world war and sixty years on in 1978-79. During the narration of the war we see Stephen now a lieutenant in the British army.Faulks depicts an honest and brutal account of what the men in the trenches had to go through, recounting the First Day on the Somme and the Battle of Messines, he doesn’t leave any details to the imagination. This morbid account is a huge contrast to the narration from the 1970s which reflects the indescribable difference between the first world war and a few centuries on; it reinforces the condemnable truth of how easily mankind can forget. Birdsong was written over twenty years ago but Faulks’s message is as relevant today as it was then and as I’m sure it will be in another twenty years.This intense novel is about love, loss and courage, but most importantly it is about how limitless human compassion and strength can be. Birdsong creates an unfaltering image of the undying and resilient force of mankind and ultimately reflects their unwavering hope and enduring courage throughout the horrors of the trenches. Birdsong proves that while the scars of war may run deep, the everlasting compulsion of love runs deeper. I struggle to find words to describe the phenomenal impact that this book has had on me, but I think Faulks sums it up fairly nicely:“I do not know what I have done to live in this existence. I do not know what any of us did to tilt the world into this unnatural orbit. We came here only for a few months.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.”

I'd heard of this book years ago but never gave it much thought. My mum and father in law both recommended it and because of my growing interest in the Great War, I got the kindle version. From the start I was gripped, it's equal parts love story ,war story and a haunting document to the Great War and the fallen. At first I was sceptical about the time structure, which moves from a few years before the War, during the war and characters and relatives in the late 1970's. This time structure is interesting though, as it allows the author to comment and bring in to focus his theme of the forgotten war. How the soldiers had a code of silence, never telling relatives or other people outside the military of their experiences and horrors. This has had the result of lost information and Faulks's book is in part about finding and remembering these experiences before they are lost to all time.The book has moments of intense action and tension, the battle of the somme is very cinematic and reminded me of the opening of saving private ryan. Graphic and haunting, I recommend it fully.

There are no words of which I am qualified to adequately describe this book. It gives a history from which all would benefit. The horrendous realities of lives made noble through sufferings and sacrifice are proof of the indomitable human spirit and, conversely the frailty of human flesh; the stupid futility of war.The redemption of creation and the power of love are beautifully woven throughout this wonderfully crafted account - I cannot call it a story, nor a novel. The power of imagination and the profound desire of the author to give such an account of life at its extremes is humbling. This is my first exposure to the writing of Sebastian Faulks. I can only salute him, with gratitude for what he has given me.

Few books had me wanting to pick it up to continue reading like "Birdsong" did. This is probably the most graphic description of what WW1 was really like. Despite the gory detail of life at the front where very little actual gains were made by either side over 4 years, there runs through it a charming love story sometimes quite erotic. It is all held together by a time lapse which adds to the reality. Everyone knows of and remembers the millions of unfortunate young people (from both sides) who were casualties of the war but here is a novel which somehow combines insane carnage with a tender romantic attachment between two lovers in the same locality which was formerly a more idyllic environment. You cannot fail to be moved by the emotions experienced by the two main characters.

A long novel on the life of an Englishman who went to France on a work assignment and, for various reasons, stayed. his progress through WW1 is so well told as to be reminiscent of Henry Williamson's accounts of life in the trenches, with the added 'excitement' of the tunnels and their claustrophobic effects. The interpersonal relationships, both intimate and military, are very strongly drawn. This story of a man, his feelings, his relationships, his phobias and his post-traumatic stress disorder is absorbing. A strongly recommended read.