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3.93 AVERAGE
3.93 AVERAGE
challenging
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Alcoholism, Body horror, Confinement, Death, Gore, Infidelity, Blood, Murder, Pregnancy, Alcohol, War, Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Misogyny, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Grief
Minor: Animal death, Child death, Domestic abuse, Xenophobia, Medical content, Death of parent
claustrophobia, graphic birth scene
dark
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
dark
emotional
reflective
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
My god this book was hauntingly beautiful.
Sebastian Faulks managed to capture the horrors of war and it's effect on soldiers in such a heartbreaking way through the mind of Stephen Wraysford and his fellow men. 'The Lost Generation' truly is an apt term, I think I will think about this book for a very long time.
Sebastian Faulks managed to capture the horrors of war and it's effect on soldiers in such a heartbreaking way through the mind of Stephen Wraysford and his fellow men. 'The Lost Generation' truly is an apt term, I think I will think about this book for a very long time.
I've just finished this book and I'm left feeling rather confused about how I want to rate it. You see, while I think that some parts of this book were utterly brilliant, I couldn't help feeling that other parts really weren't, and some parts of the plot could have really worked well had they been executed properly, which I think they were not. So that's why I'm giving this book 3 stars; bang smack in the middle, because I honestly don't know where else to place it. I should also warn you that there will be SPOILERS in this review.
So, where to begin. The first section with Stephen meeting Rene Azaire and his family including, of course, Isabelle, I thought was not that well written. I found, during that first section, that Sebastian often writes in short sentences where it would have been ok to string a couple of them together and, if he does not, the sentences are overly expressive, and I found myself wishing he could find the fine line between the two. That doesn't mean that I didn't like the plot of what was happening, I just found that sometimes the short sentences interrupted my flow and found it hard for me to get into the book at first. But the one bit that I never understood about that section was why Isabelle left Stephen at the end. We see it happen, we hear Jeanne tell Stephen that she left when she found out that she was pregnant with Stephen's child, Francoise later tells Elizabeth the same thing. We only find out that she feared they had gone too far, but then later returned to her old husband, who before, she had almost hated, and we see the tenderness she feels for Stephen later in the book, so I don't really understand why she left. I'm sure there was a reason behind it, and I can probably read between the lines to find it, but I would have liked the author to have elaborated on this in the book because it's such a vital part of the story.
Another section which I thought could have been great had it been executed well was the ending, but sadly, I don't think it was. We find out in the end that Elizabeth's grandmother was actually Isabelle, when her whole live she had believed it was Jeanne. This would have been a big reveal at the end of the book for both Elizabeth and the reader. But the reader had no idea until that big reveal that Elizabeth had believed her grandmother to be Jeanne! As soon as Elizabeth's character entered the plot, I knew that she was going to be Stephen and Isabelle's granddaughter. To me, that was just obvious. When, at the end, Elizabeth referred to her grandmother as Jeanne, I was suddenly thinking, "Wow! So maybe Stephen and Jeanne ended up getting married and they had Francoise. She is Jeanne's, not Isabelle's, which means there is another daughter out there and maybe Elisabeth is going to find her and...." and my imagination ran away. And soon after that, Francoise explained how she was Isabelle's child, and so on and so forth, and I felt rather disappointed. Even if that had been the grand reveal, it would have been much more effective if the reader had believed with Elizabeth all along that Jeanne was her grandmother. I mean, some readers may have guessed that was not the case anyway, but Sebastian never even left the threads there for us to grasp. That just frustrated me because the ending had a lot of potential. I also wish we had seen some kind of conclusion with Robert and Stuart. I mean, she just had Robert's baby. Is he finally going to leave his wife for her? And Stuart? Last time we saw him, he proposed to her and then took it back in order to give her time to think, and then left, and we never heard from him again! It would have been nice for there to have been more of a conclusion to that section of the story regarding the men in her life.
That being said, the sections during the war I thought were wonderfully written. I thought that Sebastian really captured the fear of living in the trenches and having to fight everyday, while seeing your fellow comrades die around you. We could really see that development in Stephen's character, from the lively young man he was at the beginning to the man who later wouldn't talk for two years after the war, according to Francoise. These were the sections I enjoyed the most. I loved the characters around Stephen, especially Jack. They were so refreshing after Azaire and Berard, who I disliked immensely. These sections show that Sebastian CAN write, I just don't know why he was so inconsistent with that throughout the book.
So all in all, I did like this book. I am glad that I read it, and I feel like I have gained something from doing so. It's a good book. It just frustrates me that it could have been great and just falls short of the mark.
So, where to begin. The first section with Stephen meeting Rene Azaire and his family including, of course, Isabelle, I thought was not that well written. I found, during that first section, that Sebastian often writes in short sentences where it would have been ok to string a couple of them together and, if he does not, the sentences are overly expressive, and I found myself wishing he could find the fine line between the two. That doesn't mean that I didn't like the plot of what was happening, I just found that sometimes the short sentences interrupted my flow and found it hard for me to get into the book at first. But the one bit that I never understood about that section was why Isabelle left Stephen at the end. We see it happen, we hear Jeanne tell Stephen that she left when she found out that she was pregnant with Stephen's child, Francoise later tells Elizabeth the same thing. We only find out that she feared they had gone too far, but then later returned to her old husband, who before, she had almost hated, and we see the tenderness she feels for Stephen later in the book, so I don't really understand why she left. I'm sure there was a reason behind it, and I can probably read between the lines to find it, but I would have liked the author to have elaborated on this in the book because it's such a vital part of the story.
Another section which I thought could have been great had it been executed well was the ending, but sadly, I don't think it was. We find out in the end that Elizabeth's grandmother was actually Isabelle, when her whole live she had believed it was Jeanne. This would have been a big reveal at the end of the book for both Elizabeth and the reader. But the reader had no idea until that big reveal that Elizabeth had believed her grandmother to be Jeanne! As soon as Elizabeth's character entered the plot, I knew that she was going to be Stephen and Isabelle's granddaughter. To me, that was just obvious. When, at the end, Elizabeth referred to her grandmother as Jeanne, I was suddenly thinking, "Wow! So maybe Stephen and Jeanne ended up getting married and they had Francoise. She is Jeanne's, not Isabelle's, which means there is another daughter out there and maybe Elisabeth is going to find her and...." and my imagination ran away. And soon after that, Francoise explained how she was Isabelle's child, and so on and so forth, and I felt rather disappointed. Even if that had been the grand reveal, it would have been much more effective if the reader had believed with Elizabeth all along that Jeanne was her grandmother. I mean, some readers may have guessed that was not the case anyway, but Sebastian never even left the threads there for us to grasp. That just frustrated me because the ending had a lot of potential. I also wish we had seen some kind of conclusion with Robert and Stuart. I mean, she just had Robert's baby. Is he finally going to leave his wife for her? And Stuart? Last time we saw him, he proposed to her and then took it back in order to give her time to think, and then left, and we never heard from him again! It would have been nice for there to have been more of a conclusion to that section of the story regarding the men in her life.
That being said, the sections during the war I thought were wonderfully written. I thought that Sebastian really captured the fear of living in the trenches and having to fight everyday, while seeing your fellow comrades die around you. We could really see that development in Stephen's character, from the lively young man he was at the beginning to the man who later wouldn't talk for two years after the war, according to Francoise. These were the sections I enjoyed the most. I loved the characters around Stephen, especially Jack. They were so refreshing after Azaire and Berard, who I disliked immensely. These sections show that Sebastian CAN write, I just don't know why he was so inconsistent with that throughout the book.
So all in all, I did like this book. I am glad that I read it, and I feel like I have gained something from doing so. It's a good book. It just frustrates me that it could have been great and just falls short of the mark.
dark
emotional
relaxing
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
An engaging war story. It just felt quite jumpy. Also, I didn't care about the 1910 and 1970 parts
Idk if a book has ever made me feel so claustrophobic
I thought this very novel flawed, but ultimately the parts of the book set during WWI are so compelling that it makes up for my negative feelings about the 1910 and 1970s sections of the book.
I was led to Faulks' French trilogy because of my interest in WWI novels, and so I was obviously disappointed in the first 100 pages of the book, which are set in 1910 and focus on a deeply uninteresting burgeoning love affair between a 20-year old Englishman and a 28-year old unhappily married French woman. It took so long for the novel to go anywhere and I didn't find their love story compelling or believable in the least, to the point that I considered giving up on the book. However, I generally finish the books I start, so I was unhappily determined to slog through the rest of the book, hoping that things would pick up whenever Faulks got around to writing about the war.
Fortunately for me, the second section of the book began right in the thick of WWI, and almost immediately found myself completely drawn into the novel. That part of the book is so harrowing, so well written, so devastating, that it does a lot to make up for the rest of the book. I fully understood how Birdsong ended up on so many lists of recommended books set in WWI - I can't remember the last book I read that drew me in that deeply and showed just how deeply traumatic war is.
Unfortunately, there was one more aspect of the book that brought my opinion of it right back down again - the sections set in the 1970s. I couldn't bring myself to care for the narrator, and I actively hated her romantic choices. I found those sections of the book to detract from the real heart of the novel - Stephen and his fellow WWI soldiers, and I wasn't all that intrigued or surprised by how the narrator of that portion of the book tied back in with rest of it.
I guess you could say in the end that all the romance in this book rather ruined it for me - both the incomprehensible insta-love of the first 100 pages, and the infuriating emotional passivity of the 1970s narrator throughout the latter half of the book. I also honestly hated the way the book ended.I guess you could say in the end that all the romance in this book rather ruined it for me - both the incomprehensible insta-love of the first 100 pages, and the infuriating emotional passivity of the 1970s narrator throughout the latter half of the book. I also honestly hated the way the book ended. [Don't get me wrong - I got deeply emotional when Elizabeth named her newborn son after Jack Firebrace's son. His story was the most deeply affecting of the book, and my heart ached for him and his family every time the book turned to him. However - ending the book on Elizabeth's married boyfriend's utter joy at having a son just felt - fucking bizarre? Like, fine, Faulks doesn't need to moralize to his readers about adultery, but... to end it on Robert's joy is just... what? Why? Why not return to Stephen, or even Firebrace's widow, or anything else to close out the story? My impression of the non-war sections of the book is that Faulks embraces adultery as a morally neutral choice for individuals who otherwise exert incredibly little agency in their emotional lives, which... is kind of bizarre to me, to be honest, especially when the first of his novel is such a profoundly moving look at how WWI affected the men who served.
Final complaint - why was the character of Stuart put in as a romantic foil to the married Robert? Why the hell did Elizabeth stay with a married man who is morally reprehensible and has no time for her, when there's a perfectly charming match for her who actually wants to be with her? What was the point, Faulks??
I was led to Faulks' French trilogy because of my interest in WWI novels, and so I was obviously disappointed in the first 100 pages of the book, which are set in 1910 and focus on a deeply uninteresting burgeoning love affair between a 20-year old Englishman and a 28-year old unhappily married French woman. It took so long for the novel to go anywhere and I didn't find their love story compelling or believable in the least, to the point that I considered giving up on the book. However, I generally finish the books I start, so I was unhappily determined to slog through the rest of the book, hoping that things would pick up whenever Faulks got around to writing about the war.
Fortunately for me, the second section of the book began right in the thick of WWI, and almost immediately found myself completely drawn into the novel. That part of the book is so harrowing, so well written, so devastating, that it does a lot to make up for the rest of the book. I fully understood how Birdsong ended up on so many lists of recommended books set in WWI - I can't remember the last book I read that drew me in that deeply and showed just how deeply traumatic war is.
Unfortunately, there was one more aspect of the book that brought my opinion of it right back down again - the sections set in the 1970s. I couldn't bring myself to care for the narrator, and I actively hated her romantic choices. I found those sections of the book to detract from the real heart of the novel - Stephen and his fellow WWI soldiers, and I wasn't all that intrigued or surprised by how the narrator of that portion of the book tied back in with rest of it.
I guess you could say in the end that all the romance in this book rather ruined it for me - both the incomprehensible insta-love of the first 100 pages, and the infuriating emotional passivity of the 1970s narrator throughout the latter half of the book. I also honestly hated the way the book ended.
Final complaint - why was the character of Stuart put in as a romantic foil to the married Robert? Why the hell did Elizabeth stay with a married man who is morally reprehensible and has no time for her, when there's a perfectly charming match for her who actually wants to be with her? What was the point, Faulks??
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
challenging
dark
emotional
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes