usually, when i study a book, my appreciation and enjoyment of it multiplies tenfold. take, for example, the great gatsby, which i had liked previously but became one of my favourite books of all time when i began to study it.

I could not stop listening to this book. It is wonderful. I just finished. I haven't been able to do anything except listen to this book. Excellent narration by Peter Firth. I loved it. I loved all the emotion - horror of war and passionate love. And great lines and so much to think about...... Can I collect my thoughts?! Earlier this year we marked the centenary of the start of the First World War. Centenaries are things we often celebrate but there was little, if anything, to celebrate about WW1. Other than its ending perhaps, which may explain why I decided to wait until now before choosing it as the subject of my book review for November. Sunday the 9 th is Remembrance Sunday and with Book Talk due on the 10 th it seemed appropriate. Because Faulks felt that much of the extant World War I literature was deeply influenced by World War II literature, he deliberately avoided research with secondary documents, such as historical monographs, instead focusing on veteran interviews and period primary sources. [ citation needed] Many times I have lain down and I have longed for death. I feel unworthy. I feel guilty because I have survived. Death will not come and I am cast adrift in a perpetual present. I do not know what I have done to live in this existence. I do not know what any of us did to tilt the world into the unnatural orbit. We came here for only a few months.Birdsong? More like Birdshit. I may have given this book one star, but I really give it 20 piles of steaming birdshit. This book is beautiful inside and out! Any book Julie Flett has her name on is going to be thoughtful, touching, and meaningful. Katherina moves from her home by the sea, she misses her old home and finds her new life very different. She starts to explore her new surroundings and gets to know her elderly neighbour, Agnes. Soon they become friends, despite the difference in age they share a love of art and nature. When Agnes becomes unwell, Katherina thinks of a lovely way she can show her friend things she has seen outdoors.

The way that the characters and the atmosphere are built by Sebastian Faulks is just amazing! The reader is taken in to that atmosphere, and shares the feelings of the main character, Stephen. You cannot fail to be totally captivated. a b c Nikkhah, Roya (23 May 2010). "Sebastian Faulks novel Birdsong to be made into West End play". The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 9 October 2016 . Retrieved 30 August 2016. Birdsong is a historical drama about WWI. Whenever I read about the tragedies of war I realize that had I been a soldier I never would have mentally recovered from the atrocities witnessed. Stephen, the main character, does recover but at a great cost. So, consider yourself warned. This book contains the stuff of nightmares. And it's not just the dreadful tunnels, it is the unrelenting, unfathomable misery of the World War I battlefields. What is it about this war? All war is hideous, but there is something about this war-the number of casualties, the waves and waves of young men released onto the battlefields as cannon fodder, the squalor of the trenches, the chemicals-it was a war that obliterated a generation. Many of those who survived became empty shells, having left their hope and their souls and in some cases, their minds, to the battlefields of the Somme, Passchendaele, Verdun, Ypres.The novel then advances to 1916, the early stages of the war. Stephen is a lieutenant in the British Army. He is present for the First Day of the Somme and the Battle of Messines. War leaves Stephen feeling depressed and defeated, buoyed only by his friendship with Captain Michael Weir and his men. Stephen, though, is also a committed soldier, and he refuses all offers of leave so he can continue to fight the war. I have quite mixed feelings about this book. While I found the sections on the war proper quite devastating and very well done, I also found the framing device of the pre-war romance and more present day life far less effective and also less well written. My feelings may also be affected to some extent by other World War I literature that I have been reading as part of the Centennial over the past few months. Birdsong is part of a loose trilogy of novels by Sebastian Faulks, alongside The Girl at the Lion d'Or and Charlotte Gray; the three are linked through location, history and several minor characters. [3] Birdsong is one of Faulks's best received works, earning both critical and popular praise, including being listed as the 13th favourite book in Britain in a 2003 BBC survey called the Big Read. [4] It has also been adapted three times under the same title: for radio (1997), the stage (2010) and television (2012). Elizabeth did some calculations on a piece of paper, Grand-mere born 1878. Mum born…she was not sure exactly how old her mother was. Between sixty-five and seventy. Me born 1940. Something did not quite add up in her calculations, though it was possibly her arithmetic that was to blame.” Elizabeth continues researching the war and talks to war veterans Gray and Brennan (who knew Stephen) about their experiences. During this period, she also becomes pregnant with Robert's child.

a b c d e de Groot, Jerome (2010). The Historical Novel. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. pp.100–104. ISBN 978-0-415-42662-6.Katherena has moved with her mother from a seaside city to a new home out in the country. Katherena has always loved to draw, but she is struggling with the relocation, and she doesn’t feel like drawing now. That is, until she meets her elderly neighbor Agnes. During these episodes, Stephen feels lonely and writes to Isabelle, feeling that there is no one else to whom he can express his feelings. He writes about his fears that he will die, and confesses that he has only ever loved her. Winter, Jay M. (2006). Remembering War: The Great War Between Memory and History in the Twentieth Century. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. p.40. ISBN 0-300-12752-9. Archived from the original on 5 August 2021 . Retrieved 29 October 2016. Faulks' writing is truly outstanding, the fear and hopelessness felt by the men is made vivid and terrifyingly portrayed.

Bloomsbury Publishing". Bloomsbury.com. Archived from the original on 15 January 2008 . Retrieved 12 December 2010. Told using video technology, live performance, sound design and music, all woven together to create a unique portrayal of one of the greatest love stories in modern literature. The cast performed in full costume, with digitally designed scenes and lighting, ensuring an experience rarely seen before. Agnes works with clay. The budding friendship between the two artists inspires Katherena to resume her drawing. And when age and winter confine Agnes to her bed, it is Katherena’s artwork taped all over the elderly neighbor’s bedroom that lifts Agnes’s spirits.Halfway through the story we jump to 1978, where Elizabeth Benson has taken a sudden interest in her grandfather, Stephen Wraysford and the fate of the men who died in or limped home from the trenches of World War I. Here the narrative stumbles a bit. Elizabeth, now in her late 30s, seems entirely unaware of the horrors of The Great War. This rang utterly false. "No one told me," she says upon seeing the battlefields and monuments of the Somme. I think a British citizen of her generation would have been well aware of the magnitude of that war. But Faulks gives Elizabeth a strong voice and her own personal dilemmas that bring the existential quest for meaning and truth full circle. We don't stay in late 70s London for long, but we dip in and out until the novel's end as Elizabeth's story becomes woven into her grandfather's. This is a powerful novel, and certainly not for the faint hearted. I read this for my local book club and I can imagine when we meet in February this book is going to make for great discussion. And I know people who are reading this will be like… woah spoilers, but that’s the thing. If you know anything about the war, whether it’s due to an interest in history, you’ve read books, you’ve listened to your grandparent’s talking about it… you know that this actually happened. Voicing physicality ... Tom Kay as Wraysford and Madeleine Knight as Isabelle in a split-screen online staging Birdsong.