cyphomandra (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
cyphomandra) wrote2008-11-18 09:45 pm
cyphomandra) wrote2008-11-18 09:45 pm
World War I
I'm not sure how well clumping all my outstanding books by historical period will go, but there are at least two obvious entries. The main problem with putting them all together like this is that now I desperately want to re-read Patricia Anthony's Flanders, and my copy is very firmly boxed somewhere.
Pat Barker, Regeneration. This is an excellent book that I’m also very fond of, and this was the first time I’d read it since reading Robert Graves’ Goodbye to All That, also excellent – I’d completely forgotten that he has such a large role in this book, and it was really odd (and interesting) having this as a fictional mirror to Graves’ autobiography. When I read the bits about Sassoon in Graves it’s impossible not to think, wait, maybe he doesn’t actually want you to save his military career for him, and it’s nice to see him thinking that as well here.
This book also has Rivers, who is believable in both his intelligent kindness, and his equally intelligent self-doubt, and Wilfred Owen, and many stunning scenes, none of which I can really do justice to and, basically, you should just read the book. I remember not liking the second two quite as much (more Billy Prior, who I am okay with in small doses but not all that keen on) but should go on to those as well to check, because it’s been a long time since I’ve read them. The only slight problem I had on this re-read was the fact that I read it while working my way slowly through the Gundam Wing anime – Sassoon keeps nipping off to get pep talks from Lady Ottoline Morrell, a dedicated pacifist who never actually appears on stage in the book, and I realised about 2/3 of the way through I was incapable of picturing her as anyone other than Relena Darlian-Peacecraft, which may be appropriate but was slightly unhelpful (I have resisted very strongly the urge to blend any of the other characters).
LM Montgomery, Rilla of Ingleside. Written quite some time after the war itself, and interesting for the way it comes crashing into a series that, until then, was mired in timeless (for a specific value of this) domesticity. I’m never wild about either the prophetic (Gertrude’s dreams) or the patriotic bits, but the slow reality of it – the delays in getting news, the packing up of parcels, the changes in the way everyone thinks – are what I like here, as well as the unexpected (Rilla’s adopting a war baby is always startling as a minor plot thread, and the significant character death that I am being coy about specifying also blew me away the first time I read it).
This is also the first book I’ve read on my iPod, using the Stanza e-reader; I’m currently working my way through Great Expectations, which is a bit less successful as I generally prefer Dickens in larger chunks. I’m not sure how well it would work for new-to-me reads, although I think I’ll definitely rifle through Gutenberg for a few Wodehouse titles and anything else that I can read bite-sized.
Sebastian Faulks, Birdsong. The first hundred pages or so are a fairly turgid version of your standard French Literary Romance of the early twentieth century, complete with at least one appalling sex scene, and then, fortunately, things start exploding in a non metaphorical fashion. Unfortunately, they then stop again, and there’s the distant descendant tracing ancestors plotline that I’m never all that wild about, particularly when they end up conveniently discovering all the information needed to complete the story in chronological order. I did like the information about the tunnellers, and their part in WWI, and there was some mild enjoyment to be gained from recognising places (I went on a battlefield tour run out of Amiens some years ago), but I never liked the main character, never believed the romance and was annoyed with the descendant for being so conveniently and improbably ignorant about WWI (after growing up in the UK in the 1960s) and thus allowing the author to show off his research. There’s also a very irritating author’s note and, really, I should just go back and re-read Regeneration again, which is much, much better.
Eva MacLaren, The lady with the torch
Lady Frances Balfour, Elsie Inglis
Leah Leneman, Elsie Inglis
Elsie Inglis qualified as a doctor in Scotland in 1892, although she was not awarded her degree until 1899, when it was finally decided that women were entitled to them. She worked as a surgeon/obstetrician, and was heavily involved in the suffrage movement; when WWI broke out, she offered female-staffed battlefield hospitals to all Britain’s allies, the British military having turned her down. Her organization, the Scottish Women’s Hospitals, ran battlefield hospitals throughout the war in numerous countries; Elsie herself took a unit to Serbia, which ran for some months before the Germans invaded, and then ran a prisoner-of-war hospital before being forcibly evacuated back to Scotland. She then went back to Russia – knowing, at this time, that she had cancer – and organised hospitals there despite multiple retreats, poor resources and her own failing health. She refused to leave until the Serbian troops she was working with (Austrian Serbs, mostly, who’d gone over to the Russians rather than support the Germans) were protected, and by the time this could be arranged it was winter, she could no longer walk, and getting back to the UK was horrendously difficult. They made it back to Newcastle and she farewelled the Serbian officers on the deck of the ship before collapsing, dying two days later. The biography by Balfour quotes extensively from her letters; she comes across as someone who could have been appallingly difficult to deal with (stubborn, confident and intelligent) but would never have been motivated by self-interest or greed.
Pat Barker, Regeneration. This is an excellent book that I’m also very fond of, and this was the first time I’d read it since reading Robert Graves’ Goodbye to All That, also excellent – I’d completely forgotten that he has such a large role in this book, and it was really odd (and interesting) having this as a fictional mirror to Graves’ autobiography. When I read the bits about Sassoon in Graves it’s impossible not to think, wait, maybe he doesn’t actually want you to save his military career for him, and it’s nice to see him thinking that as well here.
This book also has Rivers, who is believable in both his intelligent kindness, and his equally intelligent self-doubt, and Wilfred Owen, and many stunning scenes, none of which I can really do justice to and, basically, you should just read the book. I remember not liking the second two quite as much (more Billy Prior, who I am okay with in small doses but not all that keen on) but should go on to those as well to check, because it’s been a long time since I’ve read them. The only slight problem I had on this re-read was the fact that I read it while working my way slowly through the Gundam Wing anime – Sassoon keeps nipping off to get pep talks from Lady Ottoline Morrell, a dedicated pacifist who never actually appears on stage in the book, and I realised about 2/3 of the way through I was incapable of picturing her as anyone other than Relena Darlian-Peacecraft, which may be appropriate but was slightly unhelpful (I have resisted very strongly the urge to blend any of the other characters).
LM Montgomery, Rilla of Ingleside. Written quite some time after the war itself, and interesting for the way it comes crashing into a series that, until then, was mired in timeless (for a specific value of this) domesticity. I’m never wild about either the prophetic (Gertrude’s dreams) or the patriotic bits, but the slow reality of it – the delays in getting news, the packing up of parcels, the changes in the way everyone thinks – are what I like here, as well as the unexpected (Rilla’s adopting a war baby is always startling as a minor plot thread, and the significant character death that I am being coy about specifying also blew me away the first time I read it).
This is also the first book I’ve read on my iPod, using the Stanza e-reader; I’m currently working my way through Great Expectations, which is a bit less successful as I generally prefer Dickens in larger chunks. I’m not sure how well it would work for new-to-me reads, although I think I’ll definitely rifle through Gutenberg for a few Wodehouse titles and anything else that I can read bite-sized.
Sebastian Faulks, Birdsong. The first hundred pages or so are a fairly turgid version of your standard French Literary Romance of the early twentieth century, complete with at least one appalling sex scene, and then, fortunately, things start exploding in a non metaphorical fashion. Unfortunately, they then stop again, and there’s the distant descendant tracing ancestors plotline that I’m never all that wild about, particularly when they end up conveniently discovering all the information needed to complete the story in chronological order. I did like the information about the tunnellers, and their part in WWI, and there was some mild enjoyment to be gained from recognising places (I went on a battlefield tour run out of Amiens some years ago), but I never liked the main character, never believed the romance and was annoyed with the descendant for being so conveniently and improbably ignorant about WWI (after growing up in the UK in the 1960s) and thus allowing the author to show off his research. There’s also a very irritating author’s note and, really, I should just go back and re-read Regeneration again, which is much, much better.
Eva MacLaren, The lady with the torch
Lady Frances Balfour, Elsie Inglis
Leah Leneman, Elsie Inglis
Elsie Inglis qualified as a doctor in Scotland in 1892, although she was not awarded her degree until 1899, when it was finally decided that women were entitled to them. She worked as a surgeon/obstetrician, and was heavily involved in the suffrage movement; when WWI broke out, she offered female-staffed battlefield hospitals to all Britain’s allies, the British military having turned her down. Her organization, the Scottish Women’s Hospitals, ran battlefield hospitals throughout the war in numerous countries; Elsie herself took a unit to Serbia, which ran for some months before the Germans invaded, and then ran a prisoner-of-war hospital before being forcibly evacuated back to Scotland. She then went back to Russia – knowing, at this time, that she had cancer – and organised hospitals there despite multiple retreats, poor resources and her own failing health. She refused to leave until the Serbian troops she was working with (Austrian Serbs, mostly, who’d gone over to the Russians rather than support the Germans) were protected, and by the time this could be arranged it was winter, she could no longer walk, and getting back to the UK was horrendously difficult. They made it back to Newcastle and she farewelled the Serbian officers on the deck of the ship before collapsing, dying two days later. The biography by Balfour quotes extensively from her letters; she comes across as someone who could have been appallingly difficult to deal with (stubborn, confident and intelligent) but would never have been motivated by self-interest or greed.