A review by circularcubes
Letters from a Lost Generation: First World War Letters of Vera Brittain and Four Friends by Mark Bostridge

4.0

I feel wrung out after finishing this extraordinary collection of letters. I've read both Testament of Youth and Chronicle of Youth, but I wanted to explore more of this story. There's nothing like reading actual, first-person accounts of the men and women who served in the Great War. To imagine the conditions of the trenches and dugouts that these men wrote from is simply astounding. And there is nothing more chilling than a sudden stop to the letters. Vera writes often about the agonizing delay in letters, the horror of writing a letter to someone who has already, unbeknownst to you, passed from this life. This collection does an admirable job of bringing the reader immediately into the lives of those involved in WWI, but particularly does a fantastic job of filling in the lives of Geoffrey Thurlow and Victor Richardson, and contextualizing just how important their relationships were to Vera and Edward Brittain. It's touching to see their correspondence with Vera grow with their first written exchanges to each other - and all the more heartbreaking when those letters stop.