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lezreadalot 's review for:
All Quiet on the Western Front
by Erich Maria Remarque
We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces.
REREAD 2025. 4.5 stars. I can't quite remember why, but I was thinking about books about war, and what I would consider my favourite book about war, and it didn't take long for my mind to run on this. I came to look at my review, to revisit whatever thoughts I'd had the first time I read it, and I was disappointed by the fact that I hadn't written one. I read this almost 9 years ago, before I'd gotten into the habit of writing a review for every book I read; even if it's just a little paragraph. Now that I've reread it, I think I understand why I didn't have much to say. This gutted me. I expected it to; I know I'd had a pretty big emotional response to it the first time. But this time it was even harder. This time I appreciated the writing even more, how Remarque underscores the futility and the unfairness and the pain and the horror of the trenches. War is evil; most people would agree. But seeing it laid out and dissected and spoken about so plainly like this just drives it home. Paul's night in the trench with the French soldier remains one of the most harrowing things I've ever read.
The months pass by. The summer of 1918 is the most bloody and the most terrible. The days stand like angels in blue and gold, incomprehensible, above the ring of annihilation.
I don't have much more of a review in me; everything I want to say would just come out as wholesale quotations from the book. And it's endlessly quotable; still depressingly relevant. I did not expect it to make me cry so much! But woof. It was so good, and painful, and good. There are little moments of light amidst the despair, and they just serve to make the whole of it even more devastating. The friendship and brotherhood were beautiful, and each death broke me a little more than the previous. Listened to the audiobook as read by Frank Muller; one of my favourite classic audiobook narrators. He absolutely delivered. I could see myself making a habitual reread out of this, but man, I'll have to prepare myself beforehand.
Content warning:
Forgive me, comrade. We always see it too late.