actually_juliette 's review for:

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

5.0

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You must read this book. I'm not going to lie to you: this is a difficult book to read. Some days, I absolutely did not want to pick it up, but there was not a single day that I wanted to stop reading once I started. You are drawn uncomfortably into the minds of these young (so very young) soldiers, and you watch, with the narrator, as their bodies are blown apart, as they scream for another chance at youth.
This isn't lyrical prose: Remarque is stark and unflinching. He squeezes you and forces you to recognize the horrors of war. He forces you to pay your homage to the young men who died in the trenches. Even so, there are moments of abject beauty: blue skies and red poppies. There are moments of laughter; of course, there has to be laughter since this is a book about men, boys -- humans.