NicoleR.M.M. > Books: friends-to-lovers‎ (45)

In a story that goes back and forth in time, flashbacks superbly woven throughout the story, Alice Winn takes us back to England and Europe from before, during and after the first World War. It shows us how English society is still divided into upper and lower class, and how that affects career choices and the road one has to take into the future.
This book is an epic love story first, but it has so much more to offer. The brutal horrors of war are so vividly described that it felt like I was with these men on those battle fields and it made me question how in the world any man could have survived these horrors and stayed sane. It seems sheer impossible to me. But the contradicts of the beauty of love and the vivid tragedies of war is what makes this book so extraordinary, so heartbreaking and hopeful while at the same time it makes you feel all the despair and pain these men go through.

This is mainly Henry Gaunt's and Sidney Ellwood's story, both seventeen at the start of the war, both supposedly safe at Preshute, a younger public school. Henry Gaunt has always been infatuated with his best friend, dreamy and poetic Sidney Ellwood. But Gaunt has a German father, and to protect his family, he enlists, and in doing so, he also flees from his haunting feelings for Ellwood. But no matter how hard he tries to convince Ellwood to not follow him, they are reunited in the trenches and while they lose friend after friend, knowing they can be next, they find some solace in each other, but never realizing they are both in love with one another, both too afraid their love isn't recuperated in a time where homosexuality was still obscure and could end in a prison sentence.

"It's good to see you, Elly," he said.
Ellwood had to turn away, because it was painful to look at something so lovely without knowing if he would be allowed to keep it.
"I'm going home in a few days," he said. "To Thornycroft." He stared intently at his notebook and kept his tone casual. "My mother would like to see you."
Out of the corner of his eye, Ellwood saw Gaunt smile.
"I'd better visit her, then," said Gaunt.
Pain twinged deep inside Ellwood's head, as if someone was wringing out a fistful of his optic nerves.
"Christ. My head..."
"Don't talk anymore," said Gaunt.
"All right," said Ellwood. A profound weariness washed over him, and to his embarrassment, he spoke without thinking. "Don't go."
"I won't," said Gaunt. "I'm not going anywhere."

There was a lot of poetry in this book too (Tennyson e.g.) and I loved how poetry defined Ellwood at Preshute and how it defined him later in life, after the war. It was a very different kind of defining, but he was born a poet, though the dreaminess of it had been worn off by what he'd seen in the trenches and on the battlefields.

It took me forever to finish this book, and there was only one reason for it: I didn't want it to be over. A book so epic and so unforgettable comes to you only once in a long while and I wanted to take all the time I could before I would turn the last page. But I also wanted to know: I wanted to know if Gaunt and Ellwood would be all right, if they would finally end up together. I wanted to know what happened to their friends, of whom most were too young to enlist in this ugly war. To Maud, Gaunt's sister, who was a strong woman, ahead of her time.
The scenes in the trenches, on the battlefields were so real and vividly described that the author must have put a lot of time to research. Also the English customs at the time, the society and it's prejudices, and the changes it went through after the war felt like they were thoroughly researched as well.
And yes, though this book deserves many more stars than the 5 I can give, it won't be a book I pick up again any time soon. Despite the witty and romantic writing, the moments I laughed, just knowing how it pulls on my heartstrings, how it handles the War and it's ugliness, even despite the ending on a happier note, it's still a book that requires a certain mood.
If you are going to read it for the first time, be prepared. Be prepared for the harsh moments, the devastation, the pain and the heartbreak. But also for the beautiful, moving love story, for the unforgettable characters and the despair that, towards the end of the book, finally makes room for hope.
An epic and classic tale that deserves as many readers as possible.

"Elly," said Gaunt. "Elly, we have to focus. We - look at where we are."
But Ellwood only had eyes for him.
"I wish I could tell you in my own words," he said. "But I can't. And you don't want me to. 'Love is my sin, and thy dear virtue hate,/Hate of my sin, grounded on sinful loving-'"
"I don't hate you, don't be absurd," said Gaunt, although he did hate Ellwood a little, just then, hated him for his useless, incomprehensible eloquence, which did not belong at Loos, which reminded Gaunt of Preshute and England and things he did not want to think of until he could be sure he would have them again.
"That was Shakespeare. But sometimes Keats is best!" said Ellwood, his voice swelling with unshed tears. He seized Gaunt's waist, he tugged him close and even though Hayes was due to return at any moment, Gaunt didn't care; he would die, he knew he would, and Ellwood was looking at him as if he was the world."