Wen's Reviews > Birdsong

Not until almost the end when my 5-star became a certainty, and not until shortly before that when my first tear came. Yes, it was intense, as any book about a major war out to be. the intensity in this book did not manifest itself only through the gruesomeness the wreckage, and the atrocity associated with the war, but the emotional struggles beneath the surface of ordinary human beings being pulled out of the reality of their otherwise ordinary, though not necessarily perfect lives.
It was Stephen’s story through and through; even with the extension to his granddaughter Elizabeth 60 years ago. Stephen made an entrance to the story as a compulsive and reckless young man barely out of boyhood. The war reshaped him, and at the end we discovered along with Stephen himself, the will to live and the compassion to others that he never had thought he possessed.
“Escaped from extermination, Stephen feared nothing any more. In the existence he had rejoined, so strange and so removed from what seemed natural, there was only violent death or life to choose between; finer distinctions, such as love, preference or kindness, were redundant.”
At a certain point, I was just as fed up with the war as the soldiers in the story. Elizabeth’s episodes were cleverly inserted by the author to provide me for the breaks like Stephen had during the war.
There were quite a number of memorable characters, Isabelle, Jeanne, Colonel Gray, JACK FIREBRACE, Captain Weir, Elizabeth’s boyfriend Robert… like Stephen, they are all conflicted characters in one way or another, yet felt so realistic and believable.
Elizabeth’s love story echoed her grandmother’s but with its own spirals— History Does Not Repeat Itself, But It Rhymes .
This was my first book by the author, and my first novel with detailed coverage on WWI. I know there are two other books in the trilogy. After being so marveled by this one, not sure if I should pick them up.