Birdsong: A Novel of Love and War | Sebastian Faulks

Birdsong: A Novel of Love and War | Sebastian Faulks | Depressing and Brilliant

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Birdsong: A Novel ...

	Birdsong: A Novel of Love and War Sebastian Faulks Vintage, 1997 - 496 pages average customer review:based on 186 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

compelling read

A gripping and emotional novel with compelling characters. The descriptions of trench warfare bring the reader into the WWI era. The author's well-written prose carry the narrative along, but I did find the transitions between the plot changes a bit choppy. All in all a good read and well worth checking out.

Depressing and Brilliant

The best war-based fiction I've possibly ever read. Birdsong begins as a love story. The young Englishman lives with a business partner's family in France while on assignment and falls in love with his wife and manages to steal her away. From there the book destroys said main character, Stephen, with the unreliability of love and the horror of war. Faulks' characterization is brilliant and lacks any easy answers from any character involved. Weir, Stephen, Gray, Jeanne, Isabelle, and the rest of the cast are all complex and thoughtful. The brutality that becomes Stephen's life is slow-building. His affair with Isabelle seems dreamlike before her own complications take her away. He survives the war just barely (in fact, this part of the book may have been taken too far as Stephen survives **SPOILER** the battle Somme, being left for dead, shot, another major battle, and being trapped for a week buried underground in a tunnel**END SPOILER**) but the pure unsentimentality of the descriptions of war and the horror that Stephen sees and endures make the story both believable and poignant. As Stephen attempts to survive mental collapse through-out a life of endured brutality, the depression of the novel becomes almost overwhelming and the reader finds his or her small moments of happiness in hope in the same small moments and acts that Stephen does. Only criticism of the book is the character of Elizabeth who ties the book to semi-modern times (still 30 years ago) was a bit irritating at times but she still serves her purpose quite well of giving the author a way to address greater themes of Stephen's life and setting.

Simply a great book and modern classic that will make one want to read more of Faulks and of The Great War itself.

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Triumph from the Trenches

Mr. Faulks has captured the essence of war in what is perhaps the best novel ever written about The Great War. We are taken into the horror of the trenches while at the same time we delve into the hearts and minds of the heros whose only goal is to live one more day. A triumph of love and perseverance in the darkest of times. If you like this book, watch for Night of Flames: A Novel of World War II by Douglas W Jacobson coming in October 2007.

reviews: 1, 2, page 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

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