The Wars (1977)

When I saw The Wars was the April choice for the War & Literature Readalong, I wondered how I had never heard of this early novel by one of Canada’s literary leaders. Since I’ve read it, I wonder all the more.

Set in WWI, the story tells of young officer Robert Ross who enlists after a family tragedy leaves him bereft. Written and published in the mid-1970s when it was still possible to talk to people who remembered that war, and the elderly veterans who marched in the Remembrance Day parade had fought in the French mud, it has an immediacy and power that many other First World War novels that I have read lack.

Findley’s prose is spare. There are no wasted words. It’s very powerful, and with no profanity. 5 stars

Read this if: you care about the animals—chiefly horses and mules—that were caught ’in service’ in the Great War. ( )

A short but heavy book about one man's experience in World War I. Horses (and animals in general) are a significant motif.
I really enjoyed the narrative style, second person POV, as though the reader is the researcher looking at the photos and assembling the evidence. It works.
There is no glossing over the horrors of war in this book. ( )

I'd be hardpressed to categorize Timothy Findley's writing style. Every book of his that I have read has been significantly different from the other. In this book Findley uses a journalistic style to tell the story of Robert Ross. He also opens the book with the scene that is the culmination of his story. Then he repeats this scene at the end but now we know how Ross came to be in that situation.

The back cover captures the essence of this story :

"Robert Ross, a sensitive nineteen-year-old Canadian Officer, went to war - The War to End All Wars. He found himself in the nightmare world of trench warfare: of mud and smoke, of chlorine gas and rotting corpses. In this world gone mad, Robert Ross performed a last desperate act to declare his commitment to like in the midst of death.

I thought the story was magnificently told even though it is not easy to read. But that's the point I think. The First World War was horrific and it shouldn't be the subject of light literature. ( )

Robert Ross is a Canadian soldier whose life story and particularly his death is being pieced together by a researcher in the "present" of the book (which at the time of publication would have been the mid- to late 1970s). The story is told through standard third-person limited as well as interview transcripts, diary excerpts and interludes with the researcher looking through books in the archives. This method of storytelling does feel kind of "elliptical" (thank you GR summary) at first, especially because the researcher interludes are in the second person, but if you know going in that the story is not just third-person limited, it will be an easier ride.

I liked the story well enough on its own, but Findley's description was wonderful enough to make me want to buy my own copy of this book, so I decided to award an extra star. Of the muddy conditions in Ypres, he says "[The soldiers'] graves, it seemed, just dug themselves and pulled them down." The casual horror of war is brought home when he states that one man went outside for a breath of air -- which blew the guy's head off. The desperation of soldiers trapped in a crater during a gas attack, the cramped conditions on a troop vessel, the appalling rot and squalor in the trenches: all is painted here in vivid detail. Findley also has the power to tap emotions right at the quick: my example is Rodwell's letter, which I shall not type out here but which is extremely moving in its heartfelt simplicity.

This book is recommended for those who are interested in war fiction, enjoy excellent description and/or are okay with a somewhat less straightforward storytelling method. ( )

My one star is a literal response to the "didn't like it" text: I felt that The Wars was needlessly messy and incoherent, mistaking a mimetic response to chaos as a productive literary avenue. Findley's writing is not as good as I remembered from reading Not Wanted on this Voyage, and I often felt as if the images were either belaboured or mistily elusive. The repeated passage was a nice touch, but as a saving grace it hardly manages to salvage the other 190-odd pages. ( )