Cross posted on our little Euro SD offshoot but I’ll run it up this larger flagpole and see does the cat lap it up 
Anyone read it?
There are elements I don’t like but last night I read the section that covers The Battle of the Somme. OMG what a read. I could not stop reading. It was some of the most powerful stuff I’ve ever read. The horror those men went through was unbelievable. I knew about the numbers and the conditions involved but to have the battle scripted for me like that was an eye-opener.
The complete waste of WWI is truly maddening.
Any likes/dislikes?
I thought it was a great book. Though the romance in the begining went on a bit too long, once the main character got to the trenches, I couldn’t put it down either.
You might also like A Soldier of the Great War by Mark Helprin - a professor of Aesthetics goes for a long walk with an ignorant kid and tells him all about life, war, brutality and beauty. It is a truly amazing book. Better, I think, than Birdsong, though I loved them both.
I also loved Birdsong, as well as A Soldier of the Great War. I read Birdsong sort of back-to-back with Ian McEwan’s Atonement, and thought Birdsong came out the better read. In the similar vein of WWI-related books, I read Robert Graves’ Goodbye To All That on my father’s recommendation, which was interesting for a perspective on life with the Royal Welch Fusiliers. Graves describes the horrors of trench warfare as well, which as mentioned is a real eye-opening experience.
Birdsong is a great book, as was Charlotte Gray - don’t be put off by the rather insipid movie. There’s something fascinating about the sheer horror of World War One,