Birdsong

I told my friend Pam that one of my New Year Resolutions was to read a book a month. This seemed a pretty simple resolution to keep, as I had a few books that were already on my list. What I didn't realize, however, was that I made that resolution in the mindset of a person who is in grad school; co-workers at book club once told me that they stopped reading for pleasure while in grad school. I am fully out of school now and with tons of free time to read, and have realized that my one-book-a-month goal was fairly tame.

January is just ending and I have already read three books! And really, Pillars of the Earth can count as two! In my quest to watch anything and everything Eddie Redmayne has been in, I have been led to various novels that his film choices have been adapted from. Pillars of the Earth led directly to Birdsong (which will next lead to Tess of the D'Urbervilles), which I finished just tonight while devouring it during my time spent at home being sick over the weekend.

Birdsong tells the story of Stephen Wraysford, a young man who embarks on a passionate love affair with his employer's wife in France and then must endure the brutality of the First World War. The first part of the book is so beautiful and passionate that you can feel the sun and smell the French countryside. You get swept up in the love affair and then are placed square in the hell of war. And it's awful, the tragedy and despair and death and dirtiness and ugliness of war that was faced by men who had no idea what they were doing. The utter aloneness the soldiers feel when in civilian society is perfectly described, and the bond between men of war is expertly told.

Stephen is such a lovely character. I felt his sadness and awe at the savagery of war. He's kind of a loner, but cares for the men in his battalion. I was brought to tears on numerous occasions. This book is just great. My only quibble is that in the last thirty pages the author introduces some new characters, which I feel was extraneous; it dragged out the last moments of the book a bit too much. Overall though, the writing is wonderful.