A... MA... ZING

Another week sees another unscheduled review. Actually finished the book this weekend but had to think about how to write it up.
Brain has now had a chance to mull it over... please see below:


#### SPOILER ALERT ####


Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
I think I can honestly say that this is one of the best books I have ever read.
It is also one of the few that ever made me want to cry at several points, whilst reading it.
The frustrating thing for me is that I am not sure I can find the words to say how incredible the book is. It is brilliant on so many levels; the compelling story, the way Faulks deals with his subject matter, the strong and interesting characters, the mood Faulks manages to create, the language, the rhythm of it. Mentioning all these things still does not do any kind of justice to this book... not by a mile... that is how good it is!
The story that develops is mainly about a young man Stephen who lives and loves his way through the early 1910's and into the First World War. The story about Stephen working in France and meeting  the woman he loves is wonderful and weird, raw and filled with emotion and lust. The end up together but it isn't all pink clouds and fluffy bunnies for the two lovers. Isabelle is a complicated character strong and wilful, with a strange sense of wrong and right that crops up at the most inconvenient time. They are only happy for a short time before Isabelle decides to change their future forever. She makes choices that are inexplicable at times and leaving Stephen is only the first in a long line of ill fated choices.
This dramatic, ill fated love story is only one part of what makes Stephen who he is. We meet Stephen again during the war and you can tell he has lost something in his life. Is it a love to live for? Has she destroyed not only his love for her but only his ability to love life and care for others? Either way something is off about Stephen. The description of the war years is perhaps where the greatness of the book lies. It describes the war in all it's humanity, madness, futility and senselessness. The things the Stephen and his men have to go through are almost unimaginably horrid and cruel and yet Faulks easily leads you into their world and makes it real for you. At times it was almost too much to bear to read on as it felt like surely there was no further line of inhumanity that Stephen could cross or witness around him but there was... time after time. The description of what happens on the battlefield and after the quiet of the shelling is heartbreaking. Whether it be the life of the soldiers or the tunnellers, soldiers being on leave and trying to relax or fighting in the trenches, each of these showed us the inhumanity of mankind towards itself, friend or foe. Yet, somehow Stephen survives all the madness. There seems to be some kind of charm on his life although he himself definitely does not see his life as charmed. Who would in his situation? He is man scarred in many ways by the war. One of the supreme moments of irony in the whole things must surely be the fact that at the end of the war Stephen is rescued by those they have been shelling the whole time. How futile must your life feel when that happens? What have you been fighting for? All that hatred and fighting just to find out in the end that the other side bleed exactly the same as you do.
The final strand of the tale is the "present" time where Stephen's granddaughter takes an interest in her ancestors. Elizabeth finds some of his diaries and with some help manages to crack the code and gets an insight into her father's life during the war years. I have to say this is not the most interesting part of the novel but there is a nice parallel in Elizabeth and Stephen's lives. With her being the one who has a married man she is involved with on one side and a man who is ready to take care of her and even marry her after only knowing her for a few months. The tale from Elizabeth seems mainly to serve to tell us that Stephen did find some form of happiness in the end but that it was not the magic Hollywood ending that you might expect in any other novel. 
I am going to leave it at this as I could probably talk for hours about this novel and how wonderful it is and still not do it justice.

Suffice it to say, I loved it. Would recommend it to anyone... urge everyone to read it. If it is the only book about the First World War that you ever read.... please please read this one.

Title: Birdsong
Author: Sebastian Faulks
503 pages
Vintage
ISBN# 0-09-938791-3

Books to be read: 132
Hearts torn asunder by novel: 1