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3.83 AVERAGE
3.83 AVERAGE
Just finished this & the freaking ARC didn't have the proper ending. Bugger. It just ended mid sentence. What a great HNS review this will be. :/
Beautiful post WWI story. Loved the three major characters and the way their stories unfolded together.
To begin with I suspected this one would be one of these "women-books" that sail very close to being chick-lit. But it wasn't. It is very well written and the plot is well thought out and not too intricate to be incredible.
When I came to live in England and first experienced what I thought of as hysteria on Armistice day, I didn't understand how a war affects a nation for generations to come. Which is of course because I've never lived in such a nation. After having read a LOT about WW1 (and other wars) and now this book I believe that I understand it better. WW1 left a huge trauma in the general population and there's good reason why it has lasted a hundred years. Every family lost someone in that war and nobody could see the point and the government did very little to explain it - probably because there was no explanation.
In years to come I will regard the poppy on people's jackets and coats with respect and understanding - and be respectful of war traumas everywhere.
When I came to live in England and first experienced what I thought of as hysteria on Armistice day, I didn't understand how a war affects a nation for generations to come. Which is of course because I've never lived in such a nation. After having read a LOT about WW1 (and other wars) and now this book I believe that I understand it better. WW1 left a huge trauma in the general population and there's good reason why it has lasted a hundred years. Every family lost someone in that war and nobody could see the point and the government did very little to explain it - probably because there was no explanation.
In years to come I will regard the poppy on people's jackets and coats with respect and understanding - and be respectful of war traumas everywhere.
Beautiful prose. Haunting. Worth a read on a quiet night.
Quick read, but kind of depressing. It fit with the subject/time period of the book, though. I thought it was well written. But the ending was kind of abrupt for my taste. It left me wondering where the rest of the story went.
I really enjoyed the 5 days in the lives of these characters even though some of it was incredibly sad.
I was a little disappointed with the ending, however, it did leave food for thought and I will think about it for sometime
I was a little disappointed with the ending, however, it did leave food for thought and I will think about it for sometime
Hope begins this novel with three definitions of the word "Wake": 1) Emerge or cause to emerge from sleep. 2) Ritual for the dead. 3) Consequence or aftermath. The narratives that follow take place during five days in November, 1920, leading up to the entombment of the Unknown Warrior--on Nov. 11, 1920, the second anniversary of Armistice Day--and focus primarily on three women who struggle with grief and alienation in the aftermath of WW I. The characters' stories intersect in interesting ways; Evelyn, Hettie, and Ada never meet, but each plays a role in another's post-war experience. The narratives weave through shared spaces, interspersed with vignettes focused on the lives of soldiers, nurses, people in the crowd. The overall effect is to convey the larger social experience of surviving the war and its wake.
A well-written, complex, moving novel.
A well-written, complex, moving novel.
J’ai trouvé cette lecture touchante et bien menée. Je reste un peu déçue par l’histoire de Hettie qui n’a pas vraiment de conclusion – j’ai eu l’impression pendant tout le livre que son histoire ne servait qu’à faire avancer celle des autres, et ça s’est confirmé à la fin. Et je n’ai pas aimé l’usage du présent de narration dans ce contexte précis. Mais c’était quand même une belle expérience de lecture et je lirai le nouveau roman de Anna Hope avec plaisir.
I'm not sure this is the kind of novel that one can "like". It is unsettling, sometimes dark, and there are some scenes where this reader pulled back thinking, "Did we really need to know that?"
The story has three main female characters: Ada, Hettie, & Evelyn. They are from different stations and situations in life yet the Great War has changed all of their lives and they are tied together, though they don't know it. The POV switches between these three and I personally never had trouble following the change. It is unfortunate that the present tense writing - a style I am seriously weary of - holds you aloof from the characters, particularly Evelyn, who never quite becomes sympathetic. (I found Ada the most compelling of the three main characters.)
This is well researched (if you are interested in this book, you would also find Juliet Nicholson's The Great Silence, one of the books the author used as research, worth your time) and fairly demanded to be read through without stopping.
Sweeping generalization ahead: Americans tend to know far less about the First World War than the Second. Books like this could help U.S. readers to understand just how momentous "The Great War" truly was, and how it affected an entire generation.
The story has three main female characters: Ada, Hettie, & Evelyn. They are from different stations and situations in life yet the Great War has changed all of their lives and they are tied together, though they don't know it. The POV switches between these three and I personally never had trouble following the change. It is unfortunate that the present tense writing - a style I am seriously weary of - holds you aloof from the characters, particularly Evelyn, who never quite becomes sympathetic. (I found Ada the most compelling of the three main characters.)
This is well researched (if you are interested in this book, you would also find Juliet Nicholson's The Great Silence, one of the books the author used as research, worth your time) and fairly demanded to be read through without stopping.
Sweeping generalization ahead: Americans tend to know far less about the First World War than the Second. Books like this could help U.S. readers to understand just how momentous "The Great War" truly was, and how it affected an entire generation.