Reviews with content warning for Death of parent - In Memoriam

Brilliant book which really made me feel…everything, I guess.

WW1-era Britain, private school facing mid-war. Bunch of British school boys sign up and go through hell.

Pleasant prose. Loved reading it. Rendition of war was poignant, not so much focus on the technicalities but the experiences themselves.

Result is that I appreciated the rendered characters. How they quickly come in and out of the narrative can be overwhelming at times, (hard to keep up with names) but it’s fitting in the nature of a war-era narrative. I think it was done well, overall. Even the ones who only get a bit of spotlight I could feel for. There’s a lot of mini-narratives you get to witness from beginning to end, each tale providing another perspective to the war. I felt a great sense of authenticity from it all.

And of course the main characters were great. I wasn’t quite sold on them at first, but quickly turned around as the novel went on. While I felt they didn't feel like real people, they, themselves, felt real---how they moved in this story's changing world reflecting something so...human.

I ended up feeling a lot for these characters. They were wonderful.

I may come back to this novel someday. It was lovely.

Content Warnings

sha's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.5

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milliefitz's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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megelizabeth's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character

4.5

"Gaunt wished the War had been what Ellwood wanted it to be. He wished they could have ridden across a battlefield on horseback, brandishing a sword alongside their gallant king."

This was SO good. It was a bleak, painful read much of the time, but also filled with so much love and so many beautiful friendships and relationships. It paints a brilliantly vivid picture of life at war and also does such a good job of doing what is often omitted in war-based fiction - exploring the long-lasting mental effects of experiencing war.

This is a story that's devastating but also just hopeful enough to completely capture your heart. The ending is so clever, bittersweet, and not at all what I was expecting. I just loved this (and both Gaunt and Ellwood <3) so, so much, and I cannot wait to see what else Alice Winn writes in the future.

I think the main reason this wasn't quite a 5* read for me is that I didn't connect with the characters quite as much as I might have done if the cast wasn't so predominantly made up of private-school boys. That's not a criticism of the book as those are simply the experiences it explores, and it does touch on their privileges within the setting of a war frontline - it just meant that, whilst I loved this and loved many of the characters, I wasn't quite as connected as I have been with absolute top-tier books.

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allisoncdn's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.75

What an incredible interpretation of the war experience. I absolutely loved the references to Rupert Brooke and Tennyson. The quotes and the historical accuracy made the story incredibly believable, and the atmosphere of public schools is captured really well.

Gaunt’s presumed death

made me sob half-way through the book, and his relationship with Ellwood feels so real and raw.

Content Warnings

marmaladereads's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad tense 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

5.0

Beautiful. Literary. Utterly devastating account of war. Winn wove an absolutely gorgeous tale of how the naive and poetic Ellwood and the angry and stoic Gaunt are transformed by the trauma and brutality of war.

This book makes you feel a lot of things. It's filled with love and hope and poetry amid some of the most terrible destruction and gore and the constant drumming of death. Winn manages to strike an incredibly delicate balance of never sugarcoating the brutality, with no character being safe or protected from it, and at the same time giving us just enough of a hopeful undertone that it never feels like trauma porn.

The character development, war accounts, and love story are all masterfully woven throughout. This is definitely a book I'll be coming back to again and again.

Seeing Gaunt find true clarity and friendship during the war at the same time as Elly is utterly broken by it is possibly as devastating as the constant and rather gory accounts of deaths. It feels incredibly honest that no one comes out unscathed from this book, both physically and mentally, even the characters we come to care for the most.

I love that Winn found a way for Elly and Gaunt to be together in the end in a way where they didn't have to hide, despite the time period. After all they'd been through, I think they deserved at least that, though I would call their ending bittersweet at best.

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