BirdsongBirdsong

"In the travails of Stephen Wraysford, a British officer trapped in the troglodytic netherworld of the Great War's western front, readers will discover a convincingly rounded character whom the fates nearly grind into a nullity. But in Wraysford's being, despite the bestial filth of trenches, tunnels, and random death, an ember of self-preservation resists annihilation. And though several scenes skirt the melodramatic, as in a brotherly love armistice embrace with a German soldier, the author bracingly dramatizes survival in that war. From conveying the heart-pounding anxieties of leading men over the top, Faulks moves to soften Wraysford's increasingly cold fatalism with memories of his torrid prewar liaison with a French woman, Isabelle. The affair ruined her life but produced a child whose daughter furnishes Faulks' vehicle for flash-forwards to the 1970s, when that granddaughter becomes curious about who Wraysford was. As typical of the "lost generation" of Britain (where this novel was a best-seller), the Wraysford antihero realistically conveys what a waste--in lives and psyches--the trench experience was. A well-crafted glimpse into gloom."--Booklist.