What We're Reading About World War One: Fiction

This is a place where all those of us reading about World War 1, from its causes to its after-effects, can gather to share our thoughts on the novels and other works of fiction we're reading or discovering.

For those who are still looking for some ideas about what they can read, there's a thread for that, too! It's over here: http://www.librarything.com/topic/163004#

Happy reading!

Since I kicked off the thread, I'll post a few comments on my first WW1-related book of the year, although it's set in 1920 and only tangentially related to wartime experiences. But the authors, a mother-son duo who write as Charles Todd, also have written mysteries revolving directly around the Western Front.

I've just finished the ARC of the latest (due out in February) mystery from Charles Todd, Hunting Shadows. There are links via characters and plot twists to the war -- the mystery itself is set in 1920, and one of the victims had served on the Western Front, as had the shell-shocked Scotland Yard detective who investigates a series of crimes that may be the work of a despised group of combattants - the sniper.

That reminded me of Three Day Road, an excellent novel revolving around two childhood friends from the Cree or Ojibwe tribes in N. Ontario, both of whom end up as such "sharpshooters" for the Canadian forces in France; one of them is being taken home to his community, hence the journey of the title. Joseph Boyden is a superlative writer, IMHO.

And just in case people haven't seen this anywhere else, Daughters of Mars by Thomas Keneally is on sale via Kindle for $2.99 today.

This was my review of it last year:

At the heart of the book are the two Durance girls (yes, the name is clearly well chosen, and the near-pun nodded at early on in the narrative and then discarded), both of whom are nurses and both of whom volunteer to go off to war, first to Gallipoli and Alexandria, and then the Western Front. The Durance girls are ill at ease with each other, with tensions of various kinds underpinning their relationship, but in extremis they form new and to the reader very moving bonds. None of this is sentimentalized or easy, any more than are their relationships with those around them. The Durance girls, it is said of them, are cool and aloof, and whether it's shyness, reserve or something else, forming close ties with others simply isn't something they do readily. War brings them to life by bringing to them a sense of purpose even as it creates in them a sense of despair. "Young men were smashed for obscure purposes and repaired and smashed again," Naomi Durance muses.

Overall, this is probably one of the most impressive novels I have read about war that isn't about conflict itself, but rather life on the fringes of war and dealing with its detritus. "There's no rest for anyone until it's all over," one character points out testily later in the novel. "Unless it's the sort of final rest they dish out in Flanders and on the Somme." That's the tone throughout: even dealing with events and topics that would lead a lesser writer to bog down in sentimental claptrap, Keneally's tone remains wry, replete with this kind of very real, vivid and ironic humor. When the Durance girls and their fellow nurses form romantic relationships, that isn't a cue for hearts and flowers or tragic melodrama; courtship is understated and formal and all the more convincing for that. There is a sense that these people have been brought by the horrors of war to understand what it is that is important and what is peripheral.

Keneally's writing is pitch perfect, and so often exactly the kind of deadpan pragmatism that I tend to associate with Australians. "There are only two choices, you know," Naomi tells her sister Sally at one point. "Either die or live well. We live on behalf of thousands who don't. Millions. So let's not mope about it, eh?" That kind of relentless unsentimentality, coupled with the author's ability to capture so vividly the realities of warfare and wartime nursing a century ago, is awe-inspiring in a book of this kind.

A must-read. Every year I find a very, very small handful of books that I want to jump up and down and celebrate and insist that everyone else read. This is one of 'em for 2013. If you're remotely interested in the topic, the author or the type of narrative, miss it at your peril.

Here's my review of 1914: A Novel by Jean Echenoz, which was published in the US this past Tuesday.

The latest novel by Echenoz opens in the Vendée region of France, as a lazy and quiet Saturday afternoon in August 1914 is interrupted by the insistent pealing of church bells throughout the region, which signals a call for mobilization for the impending war against Germany. The novel focuses on five ordinary men in one village, and a young woman who loves one man and is fond of another. The men and their commanding officers are convinced that the combat will last no longer than a few weeks, and that all will return home safely. However, as weeks turn into months and months into years, and as the soldiers see their companions felled in action, they are transformed into dispirited men who rely on alcohol to dull their senses. Echenoz writes poignantly about their seemingly hopeless circumstances:

Well, you don't get out of this war like that. It's simple: you're trapped. The enemy is in front of you, the rats and lice are with you, and behind you are the gendarmes. Since the only solution is to become an invalid, you're reduced to waiting for that “good wound”, the one you wind up longing for, your guaranteed ticket home, but there's a problem: it doesn't depend on you. So that wonder-working wound, some men tried to acquire it on their own without attracting too much attention by shooting themselves in the hand, for example, but they usually failed and were confronted with their misdeed, tried, and shot for treason. Mowed down by your own side rather than asphyxiated, burned to a crisp, or shredded by gas, flamethrowers, or shells—that could be a choice. But there was also blowing your own head off, with a toe on the trigger and the rifle barrel in your mouth, a way of getting out like any other—that could be a choice too.

The lives of the five men are all irrevocably altered by the war, in different ways. However, Echenoz shows us that the trauma of war is not limited to those who have experienced combat, or have had their homes or livelihoods taken away from them. Many seem to lose their basic sense of humanity by taking advantage of their countrymen in battle, overcharging them for food or drink as they march through villages, or supplying them with overpriced, shoddily made equipment.

1914 is a quiet and elegantly written novella about the effects of The Great War on a group of ordinary men and citizens of a small French town, whose power comes not from grisly descriptions of combat, but in the benumbed despair that afflicts everyone in its midst. The book is greatly enhanced by notes from the book's translator, Linda Coverdale.

Wow the standards have been set over here already with stellar reviews from Suz and Darryl. I am still ploughing through a non-fiction book on the causes of the war by Christopher Clark, but want to join in the fun soon.

I finished Greenmantle this week, an espionage/adventure novel written by John Buchan in the midst of WWI. The story begins in the weeks after the Battle of Loos, when Richard Hannay is recuperating from minor battle wounds. The action takes the heroes eastward through enemy territory, with a destination of Constantinople. The characters make a number of references to Gallipoli in their conversations. My review is here.

I started listening to a big epic yesterday. A Soldier of the Great War by Mark Helprin. I have had the book for a long time and decided that this might be a book I could listen to. So far it is working as a recorded book. It is about the obscure Italian front in the Alps (specifically the Eastern and Southern Tyrol) where Germany and Italy faced off. It has been of interest to me ever since I discovered that a rather obscure decorated German war hero served on that front and it was where he made his first claim to fame. That was winner of the Iron Cross in WWI was Erwin Rommel. This little know part of WWI that cost Italy a million casualties is something I want to know more about. References to this part of WWI show up often in the work of Alan Furst - particularly those works that are set in Central and Eastern Europe and have to do with the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

I've finished a few fiction books set during the First World War:

One of ours by Willa Cather is great - the story of a young man growing up a farmer in Nebraska who ends up in the trenches. Lots of great characters and, as usual with Cather, some great descriptions of place, this is a fine introduction to First World War fiction.

Dead man's land by Robert Ryan is a little far-fetched. Dr. Watson deserts Holmes and rushes off to join the Army Medical Corps. He then ends up solving murders on the Western Front. However, the descriptions of the state of medicine at the time are excellent (and gruesome) and in all it's rather well written.

My WWI reads for the first quarter of 2014 were:

January:
One of Ours by Willa Cather (3.2 stars)
February:
The Invisible Wall by Harry Bernstein (3.6 stars)
March:
In the Shadow of Blackbirds by Cat Winters (2.7 stars)
The Night Flyers by Elizabeth McDavid Jones (3.5 stars)

First Quarter Reads:
I managed two books on this theme in the first quarter:
William an Englishman by Cicely Hamilton (3.5 stars)
Mr. Britling Sees It Through by H. G. Wells (3.5 stars)

Second Quarter:
Last month I started One of Ours by Willa Cather.
When I finish that one I plan:
The War Workers by E. M. Delafield
and / or
What Not A Prophetic Comedy by Rose Macaulay

I finished Mr. Standfast by John Buchan a couple of weeks ago. It's the 3rd of his Hannay books, and the second to take place during the war. Hannay has reached the rank of brigadier general when he's called from France to go undercover as a pacifist in an anti-war crowd. The intelligence service wants him to flush out an enemy spy who appears to be an upstanding citizen with pacifist leanings. The book includes some battle scenes that illustrate the communication problems I learned about from Keegan's history of the war. Flying squadrons, tanks, and trench warfare are all included. The book was published shortly after the war ended.

My WWI reading for this quarter (April – June):

April:
Men Who March Away by I. M. Parsons (poetry) 3.9 stars
Journey into the Past by Stefan Zweig (literary fiction) 4
May:
Messenger of Truth by Jacqueline Winspear (historical mystery) 3.8)
A Month in the Country by J. L. Carr (historical fiction) 4.3
Toby’s Room by Pat Barker (historical mystery) 3.6
June:
A Test of Wills by Charles Todd (historical mystery) 3.5

My third quarter WWI reads:

July:
A Duty to the Dead by Charles Todd
The Day the Falls Stood Still by Cathy Marie Buchanan
August:
Stella Bain by Anita Shreve
As the Crow Flies by Jeffrey Archer
The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman
The Return of Captain John Emmett - Elizabeth Speller
September:
A Question of Honor by Charles Todd

I started reading Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 by Christopher Clark and since it is a really big book, it will probably be my last WWI book for the year.

My fourth quarter WWI reads:

October:
Silence for the Dead - Simone St. James
The Murder Stone - Charles Todd
November:
Letters from Skye - Jessica Brockmole
The Light Between Oceans - ML Stedman
The Flyer - Stuart Harrison
December:
A Bitter Truth - Charles Todd
The Air We Breathe - Adrea Barrett
Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce - Stanley Weintraub
An Impartial Witness - Charles Todd