A review by suebarsby
Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain

3.0

The book's strongest part is the middle section, which covers the war years. It's genuinely harrowing and her grief comes across as desperate and raw, despite writing this many years later. The rest flagged a little, though it is clear why she chose to end it when she did but there was really a limit to how many letters to Winifred Holtby I was interested in reading. But these are trifling criticisms. I was distracted by just how easily it seemed to be for people to send letters to each other, even with no fixed address, and to catch trains at the last minute of great distances with very little trouble at all even in the middle of a war. We really have gone backwards as a society.