TBR: Birdsong
When I wrote about my criteria for keeping or discarding books, I said that one of the reasons that I keep books is to be able to lend them out. This week’s book is one that I don’t think I’d ever have picked up if my father hadn’t said it was wonderful and then put it in my hands. The book is Birdsong, by Sebastian Faulkes. And I wouldn’t have picked it up because it is, as the subtitle says "A Novel of Love and War," and I’m not a huge fan of either romance novels or war stories.
I’m still not sure the book hangs together as a whole — the primary story from World War I is cut together with scenes from the life of the main character’s granddaughter, 60 years later, which exist mostly to let Faulkes make a point about how quickly forgotten the horrors of WWI were. But the descriptions of trench warfare are both engrossing and horrific. Faulkes shows soldiers seeing their friends killed, and having to keep doing the exact same things that led to their deaths, and doing it again and again and again for weeks or month on end (often with the rotting bodies still in view).
And, as Faulkes points out, the idea that the world managed to do it all over again just 20 years later is hard to believe. Reading this book, I had some sympathy for Neville Chamberlain‘s position for the first time.
October 24th, 2007 at 8:42 pm
My father came home from WWII full of hatred for the brass who had put him at risk heedlessly. It’s hard to know what the right historical analogy is: Bush thinks Kerry is a Chamberlain wannabee, and he is Churchill. Kerry thinks Iraq is Viet Nam. Bush thinks he is protecting the Saar. Truman thought Korea was Manchuria redux. Reagan was asked what government regulation was legitimate and he named some agencies – no one could figure out how they made sense, what was the common thread, until they figured out that those were the Federal regulators which had been active when he was a young man.
Churchill is a hero now, and Chamberlain a goat. Chamberlain thought he could negotiate with Hitler, and was proved wrong. Bush thought there was no deal to make with Saddam Hussein, but that there is a deal to be had with Kim Jong Il. Who can tell? Ask me in forty years.