A review by megancortez
Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain

5.0

This is a simple story of a young girl who continues to live, even as so many (so, so many) of those around her die; a young girl who grows into a modern woman. She works to endure a horrible war as a nurse and is made to feel, viscerally, the impacts of this new violence, and grapple with a life so different than the one her upbringing had promised her.

This memoir evaluates the lacking solidity of reason of "heroism in the abstract" and the dissolution of chivalric values at the slaughter and cannibalism of the old world which was the First, the Great World War. It posits that this "modern war['s] only result must be the long reaping in sorrow of that which was sown in pride."

(Goodreads refreshed while I was typing up a really lovely, poignant review, and I hate my life because I lost it. I'll try and remember what I wrote and come back to edit this.)