Birdsong: A Novel of Love and War | Sebastian Faulks

Birdsong: A Novel of Love and War | Sebastian Faulks | Best book I've read in years

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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 187 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Lament of love and war

Iceland and Icelanders did not suffer much in the former world war. We, however, lost a lot of civilians and seamen in the latter world war. Note, that in our language there is only space for two world wars, the former and the latter. There will never be another or a third one. I like to believe that I am rather well educated but my belief often hits me as quite an illusion. Hit me yet again, reading the powerful novel, Birdsong, last year. The book describes the horrors of the former world war but it is also has an enfatuating love story. With time I have come to think of the book as one of the most beautiful requiems composed. Thank you Sebastian Faulks.

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Best book I've read in years

I found Birdsong at the WWI memorial at Thiepval, France and read it in less than a week. This is the most powerful book I've read in years, and I believe everyone should read it. This novel transports the reader to 1914 France and goes right into the trenches and tunnels of the battlefields of The Somme. The book has everything to capture the reader's imagination. The 500 pages go quickly, as the language flows flawlessly, character development is excellent, and there is very vivid imagery.
I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in history, romance, war, peace, love, etc. AMAZING!

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Simply Incredible

I picked up Birdsong not expecting too much. I mostly read it because I had nothing else to choose from but I am so happy that I read it. I have never really read something that describes the horrors of war in such a powerful way and never really had any idea that World War I was as bad as I now know it was. The powerful emotions felt and the experiences endured by those soldiers was incredible and I no longer shadow any doubts that war is mankind's most evil creation. And I did even mention the beautiful but tragic love story? This will not be the last book that I will read on World War I.

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powerful evocation of war

Birdsong is the record of one man's experience of the trenches in the First World War. It begins 4 years prior to its beginning when 20-year-old Stephen Wraysford, the man in question, travels to a town in Northern France to research aspects of French industry for his employer back in Britain. He stays at the house of a French factory owner, Azzaire, a man of dubious character but some distinction in his local community, who is married to a much younger woman, Isabelle; the step-mother to his teenaged children, Lisette and Gregoire. Very quickly Wraysford senses that all is not as harmonious in his host's household as his host would like him to believe and feels himself drawn towards the beautiful and enigmatic Isabelle with whom he begins a brief but intensely passionate love affair. The affair, which mirrors in microcosm, in its effects on the lives of the main characters in the book, the cataclysmic events about to engulf the world at large, is like an earthquake that shatters the seemingly granite façade of the Azzaire household the aftershocks of which echo throughout the remainder of the story.

Birdsong is, though rightly popular, a good but not great novel. The faults in its structure could have been so easily avoided by a more ruthless and visionary editor, ridding it of an entirely unnecessary subplot involving the hero's grand-daughter, that simply undermines the near faultless and believably written opening sections. Nevertheless, it offers a convincing view of life in a provincial French town immediately prior to the outbreak of the war. Likewise, the writing that describes the everyday existence of the front line troops on both sides powerfully evokes the sense of alienation that must have been felt by all who lived through the utter horror visited upon ordinary lives and families by the obscene dynasties and psychotic personalities that composed the archaic ruling houses of Europe immediately prior to the outbreak of the war to end all wars.

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