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Birdsong: A Novel of Love and War

4.0 of 5 stars 4.00 · rating details · 23,216 ratings · 1,351 reviews

Published to international critical and popular acclaim, this intensely romantic yet stunningly realistic novel spans three generations and the unimaginable gulf between the First World War and the present. As the young Englishman Stephen Wraysford passes through a tempestuous love affair with Isabelle Azaire in France and enters the dark, surreal world beneath the trenche...more

Paperback, 483 pages

Published June 2nd 1997 by Vintage International (first published 1993)

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Mar 22, 2013 Lance Greenfield Mitchell rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fiction, my-top-books

It's as if the author is writing from personal experience.

The way that the characters and the atmosphere are built by Sebastian Faulks is just amazing! The reader is taken in to that atmosphere, and shares the feelings of the main character, Stephen. You cannot fail to be totally captivated.

Anyone who has served for any significant period in the Armed Forces will instantly relate to the use of black humour to cover the awful reality and horror. Faulks also manages to reflect on how every aspect...more

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May 21, 2012 Zhiqing rated it 5 of 5 stars

Beautifully written. As the subtitle indicates, this is a "A Novel of Love and War". The part about THE war, I have to admit I had very little knowledge of WWI before I read this book, except for the bare minimum of how it started and how a great many young men died in the war. I also don't normally read books with many battle scenes and with war as the main theme, but once I started reading this one, I just couldn't put it down until I reached the last page. What moved me most was the detailed...more

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Nov 14, 2012 Doug rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: crap, misogynistic, english

[Trigger warning for rape]

I'm pretty confused as to why this book has such a high rating on here. What should be transparently obvious to anyone who's read this is that Sebastian Faulks is a poor writer. His understanding of pacing is risible; his prose is bland and leaves absolutely nothing to the imagination; his knowledge of how to write a romantic, let alone convincing, sex scene is non-existent (no, Sebastian, using the word "impaled" to describe vaginal penetration conjures up no sweeter c...more

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Jan 31, 2012 ·Karen· rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: brits

One of the Burberry Boys, Eddie Redmayne of the bruised looking lips as Stephen Wraysford in the new BBC film.

Sebastian Faulks’ epic love story set against the First World War, which became a modern classic when it was published in 1993, is adapted for the screen for the first time by Abi Morgan.

The action of the two part serial moves between 1910 and 1916, telling the story of Stephen Wraysford, a young Englishman who arrives in Amiens in Northern France to stay with the Azaire family and falls...more

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Jan 20, 2012 Dem rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: bookclub-reads, recommended, favorites, war

Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks is a moving, passionate, shocking, thought provoking and heartbreaking novel. A novel that manages to create a passionate and erotic love story combined with the horrors of war.

Set before and during the Great War, Birdsong tells the story of Stephen, starting in pre-war France and taking us right through the war and through a terrible period of history.
Faulks delivers a moving and shocking account of Stephen and his love affair and the trials and hardships of trenc...more

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Feb 08, 2008 Suzanne rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: historical-fiction

This is one of the most haunting novels I have ever read about World War 1. The title comes from the the practice of coal miners bringing a "canary in the coal mine" to test for bad air. In WW 1 hundreds of British coal miners were drafted into the British Army to help build tunnels under the trenches in France. The main character leaves Britain and enters the War after a failed affair....the descriptions of trench warfare, tunnel making, nerve gas, human carnage and the waste of war is a powerf...more

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Jul 30, 2012 Michael rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, historical-fiction, 1001-books-you-must-read-before-you, england, france, world-war-1, belguim

This is a masterful novel with lasting resonance for me about the impacts of war and resilience of human spirit. I think its achievement be at a level of "All Quiet on the Western Front". The narrative covers the life of an English man in France before the World War 1, his four years as a soldier, and a search by his granddaughter 60 years for knowledge of his life.

It's hard for the reader to care about Stephen Wraysford in the first section. He is aloof and unemotional, with no family or relig...more This is a masterful novel with lasting resonance for me about the impacts of war and resilience of human spirit. I think its achievement be at a level of "All Quiet on the Western Front". The narrative covers the life of an English man in France before the World War 1, his four years as a soldier, and a search by his granddaughter 60 years for knowledge of his life.

It's hard for the reader to care about Stephen Wraysford in the first section. He is aloof and unemotional, with no family or religion, and he has little ambition in his work as a liaison between a textile company in England and in rural Amiens, the area of the Battle of the Somme. But a passionate love affair with a married woman begins to awaken his humanity. Faulks finds in him a suitable vehicle to portray a kind of man who could survive and do well as a soldier in the face of the devastations and vacuum of purpose in this war. He becomes a lieutenant assigned to support the efforts of a tunneling crew tasked with digging under the German lines and setting off explosions. The contrasts between the horrors of trench warfare and the alternative hell underground, make for powerful reading despite the unemotional tone of its rendering.

A war like this should make our civilization become more human somehow in response; Stephen seems to represent a miraculous example of that on an individual level. Over time Stephen comes to care about the men he fights with and develops a form of love with two in particular, a captain of a sapper platoon and a middle aged "tunnel rat". In a foreward to the 2004 edition, Faulks notes: "Michael Weir and Jack Firebrace provided harmonic lines in counterpoint to Stephen's: innocence when he is worldly, scared where he is cold, despondent while he remains questing." Firebrace is driven to return to his family, whereas Weir, Stephen figures: "tries to believe his survival is worth something to fight for. Something to die for, you might almost say. He's not afraid of gas or shells or being buried. He's frightened that it doesn't make sense, that there is no purpose. He's afraid that he has somehow strayed into the wrong life."

As Stephen struggles with his nihilism, a near death experience shakes him up. His comes to let loose of the pain of his lost love from before the war: "He told himself that the feeling that they had for each other still existed, but that it existed in a different time."; he is able to nurture a relationship with the woman's sister, which motivates his will to survive.

Decades later, his granddaughter Elizabeth unearths some of Stephen's story, rendering a perspective from a "normal" life. Faulks explains in his preface how he used her in order that: "he past and the present, the public and private, be shown to be vitally interdependent gestures of love and redemption towards the past".(less)

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Aug 12, 2012 Chrissie rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Chrissie by: Dem

Shelves: audio, england, france, hf, ww1, favorites

Buddy Read with Silver Raindrop. :0)
We will leave comments with each other below our reviews, for those who are interested.

I have listened to only twenty minutes. I love the prose style, the narration of the audiobook by Peter Firth is excellent and the events already have me terribly curious. Steven is creeping around a house in his socks searching for who has screamed! The depiction of Amiens, where the house is located, is perfect. I have been there, so I know. Unfortunately the narrator pron...more Buddy Read with Silver Raindrop. :0)
We will leave comments with each other below our reviews, for those who are interested.

I have listened to only twenty minutes. I love the prose style, the narration of the audiobook by Peter Firth is excellent and the events already have me terribly curious. Steven is creeping around a house in his socks searching for who has screamed! The depiction of Amiens, where the house is located, is perfect. I have been there, so I know. Unfortunately the narrator pronounced the city name incorrectly, but his baritone singing of a song in the text has me forgiving this error. And there is a discussion which illustrates how the French and the English view each other...... Funny! I guess you could say I like this from page one.

I could not stop listening to this book. It is wonderful. I just finished. I haven't been able to do anything except listen to this book. Excellent narration by Peter Firth. I loved it. I loved all the emotion - horror of war and passionate love. And great lines and so much to think about...... Can I collect my thoughts?!

This book has everything. It is exciting and horribly moving and oh so wonderful. It is like life: full of the worst and most wonderful.

There are lines you must ponder. Why does one fight in a war? Who do we fight for? Do you fight for your land, your family, your friends....or for those comrades who have fought and died next to you? You are in the trenches and in tunnels, in the middle of bombardments. You are in a tunnel and you may be suffocated and buried alive. This book is about fear. This book is about the warfare of WW1.

But there is humor and passionate love too. Their is death and there is birth. There is hope and despair. The story takes place during WW1 in the trenches in France. It also has events set later, in the 70s. Most authors cannot switch between different time periods. In this book the two are wonderfully intertwined.

This book rips you apart, scares you to death, rolls you in passionate, sensual love, one minute has you giggling and then later pondering the essence of life and death and fear. The book is an emotional roller coaster. And you will learn what it was really like to fight in the first world war. You can swallow the horror because it is balanced by humor and love and passion and even hope and happiness.

I loved this book. So far this is the best book I have read about WW1.
(See my WW1 shelf if you are curious for other titles: http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/...

Ooops, I think I am gushing!
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Jun 27, 2008 Wendy rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: historical-fiction

I considered myself a fairly informed person about the 1st World War, until I read this book. It is one of the most disturbing accounts of the effects of atrocities upon the human mind I have ever read. A friend of mine who is a psychiatrist, and specialises in the effects of shock on the mind, borrowed this from me and was impressed with the accurate portrayal of the reactions of humans to extreme stress.

The book starts some years before the war when a young english man, Stephen Wraysford, goes...more I considered myself a fairly informed person about the 1st World War, until I read this book. It is one of the most disturbing accounts of the effects of atrocities upon the human mind I have ever read. A friend of mine who is a psychiatrist, and specialises in the effects of shock on the mind, borrowed this from me and was impressed with the accurate portrayal of the reactions of humans to extreme stress.

The book starts some years before the war when a young english man, Stephen Wraysford, goes to stay with a French family to gain work experience. He falls in love with the wife of the family and they start a passionate affair eventually leading her to leave her husband and children. After moving to a small town and living together for some time, she leaves him to return to her family and, finally he returns to England.Years later he finds himself back in France under more strained circumstances, in the mud of the trenches.

We follow Wraysford and the men under his command through the horrors of the campaigns across the fields of France, watching through their eyes as their comrades fall and their humanity is taken from them.

The book ends by coming up to the present day and following a descendant of Wraysford as she traces his history and we eventually learn his full story.

What is most shocking and, I am told by my psychiatrist friend, most realistic about this book is that the soldiers reactions become numbed to the carnage and that seeing so much horror on a daily basis lessens the effect, or apparant effect, on them. Perhaps this isn't so surprising given that the rise in violence on tv and film is blamed for numbing us to the attrocities in the world.

This book paints a graphic picture of the 1st World War and will make you think about exactly what the human mind can endure.

Given the above you might wonder why you should read this book but I can assure you that the story is wonderful and amongst the horror there are human stories of love and friendship which will keep you reading. There are also some wonderfully erotic moment between Wraysford and his french lover.

All in all this book is brilliant - love, sex, war, friendship, carnage and the enduring human spirit.
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Nov 20, 2007 Janelle V. rated it 4 of 5 stars

Finishing this book is something like being dug out of a shell hole, or emerging from sleep still in the grip of one's nightmare. Faulks did a shatteringly good job of conveying the sheer incomprehensible horror of the trenches and mines. He was equally adept at blind, headlong, addictive physical passion. What kept this novel from five stars was the 1978-1979 material about Elizabeth Benson. While the snippet of her at Thiepval is moving, I get no sense of promises kept or the torch being passe...more

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Apr 01, 2013 Elaine rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: history, literary-exploration

For quite a way into this book I kept putting it down and feeling disinclined to pick it up again. I wasn't sure why I found it so heavy going. There's no doubt that its brilliantly written, it wasn't dry and boring, but for some reasonI just couldn't get into it. I realised that I really didn't ike the main character and consequently had no interest in what happened to them. However I persevered with reading although slowly.

Then the war started. Oh my goodness what a book!! I knew the first wor...more

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Sep 13, 2012 Jade rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012, kindle, 1001-books

Like most people I've known about this classic for years, but having not been made to read it on my school syllabus, just figured it would probably be boring. I've never had an interest in the first world war, Im not a pro war individual and find it depressing that so many men died needlessly...yes I'm one of those horrible individuals who act like it never happened and change the subject from those whose lives were turned upside down by it! Not because I don't respect it, because the idea of fa...more

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Jan 10, 2013 Skyla rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: ww1, historical, set-in-france, set-on-british-isles, adult-book, best-world-building, books-i-own, brit-lit, cover-matches-book, dark-subject-matter, disappointment, i-love-this-love-interest, invading-army, there-s-a-movie, there-s-a-tv-show

Find this review and more on my blog: http://happygolucky-skyla.blogspot.ca/

Do you ever read a book after you have seen the film/TV version and think…the book was lovely but the film/TV version was better?

That is how I feel about Birdsong.

This book is touted as “for fans of The English Patient”, well I hated The English Patient, both the book and the film, both of which I had to read/watch for an English class at Uni, and for me seeing that on the front cover of my book made me feel like this w...more

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Aug 01, 2012 Caroline rated it 2 of 5 stars

Hummmm... I found it hard to lose myself in this book and connect with the characters. I don't know why I felt so removed from it. I could only really envisage two of the people in the book - firstly a minor character called Monsieur Bérard. He was an officious town counseller, a small town bully, used to bossing other people around. But he had presence, and for me he was there as a human being. The other character I responded to was Jack Firebrace, a tunneller, with superb listening skills...he...more

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Nov 04, 2011 Jo rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: course-books, my-favourites, need-to-reread, hometown-glories-uk, gorgeous-prose, just-been-cutting-onions, history-smishtory

"It was not his death that mattered; it was the way the world had been dislocated. It was not all the tens of thousands of deaths that mattered; it was the way they had proved that you could be human yet act in a way that was beyond nature."

This ‘review’ might sound like a huge cliché, and for that I apologise. What I don’t apologise for is the sentiments behind it because I mean every word.
I approached this book, the third time I have read it, with extreme caution. I felt like I was meeting up...more

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Mar 07, 2008 Rose added it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2008

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. The start of this book, in which Stephen is a guest in Isabelle's house, did not immediately grip me and I found it slow going. I did not enjoy the explicit scenes between him and Isabelle's, although they seemed better drawn and less gratuitous than is usually the case.

I found that I enjoyed the book far more after the change of narrative to the Great War. This, I found very moving and beautifully sketched - it truly brought the realities and horrors of the war to life for me. I was less inter...more The start of this book, in which Stephen is a guest in Isabelle's house, did not immediately grip me and I found it slow going. I did not enjoy the explicit scenes between him and Isabelle's, although they seemed better drawn and less gratuitous than is usually the case.

I found that I enjoyed the book far more after the change of narrative to the Great War. This, I found very moving and beautifully sketched - it truly brought the realities and horrors of the war to life for me. I was less interested in Elizabeth's life, but in some ways her narrative served to heighten the differences between the normal civilian life so many men had fought for, and their lives and deaths while fighting it.

The account of their first attack was terrible: the fake assurances made to the men and the ludicrous tactics adopted (such as attacking in daylight). Worst was the relentless march of men trudging on only to be gunned down before they had barely left their trenches - only to be followed again and again by waves of men knowing the fate of those before them but doomed to step forwards into death nonetheless.

The role of the sappers was new to me, and the tunnels so vividly depicted that I felt quite claustrophobic just listening to it. The eventual rescue of Stephen by German soldiers was a relief, but seemed a little too pat; every time something happened it was hard to take it completely seriously because it never seemed that the main character would actually die. His most unlikely rescue coinciding exactly with the armistice was symbolic, but too coincidental for my liking.

Overall, a book that had me thinking deeply and awakened in me an interest in that period of history. I now know much more about the events of the First World War than before reading this book, and am keener to learn more. Since I have read Charlotte Grey and The Girl at the Lion d'Or, this completes the trilogy for me, but unfortunately I read them so long ago that most of the links between them are lost to me. (less)

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Dec 30, 2008 Leigh rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: genre-novels, subject-war, subject-war-wwi, 1975-1999, saw-film, location-in-sf

I resisted loving this book for as long as I could, for a variety of reasons--foremost among them my sense of its being a little too neat, a little too dramatically contrived--but in the end I gave in. I loved this book, for all its flaws and for all my lack of real interest in its protagonist.

When I was reading the first section (approximately one hundred pages, prewar), I wrote of it: "Faulks cites a number of nineteenth-century French authors as influences, and Flaubert in particular is evide...more

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Apr 09, 2012 A.j. Bealing rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Anyone who thinks war an acceptable course of action

Birdsong explains why war is always to be avoided. It does so with a passion and intensity that is hard to attribute to a writer who was not there in person. Sebastian Faulk's powers of perception are phenomenal; I do not know whether to envy or pity but I most certainly admire.

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Apr 06, 2012 Kristen rated it 2 of 5 stars

Stopped reading this 200 pages in. I understand its greatness, but it's just too slow for my taste. A lot happens in the story, but it's described in a way that makes it seem like nothing is happening at all. There's very little action going on, even though a good chunk of this book revolves around WWI and the trenches. It's hard to care for the characters because they all have annoying qualities and silly reasons for why they make any of their decisions. It's just not a book I can invest much i...more

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Apr 13, 2009 Tanja rated it 3 of 5 stars

Yhis was a hard book to rate for me. The story was captivating and I think Faulks was so descriptive I felt I was actually there in a bunker with the men or racing up a hillside trying not to get shot by the Germans. Despite the great imagery, there were parts of the story that could not make me believe in it and I did not enjoy the end of the book. It goes against what I believe in and I felt kindof sad for all the characters in the end. So I gave it a three because I think the author did a goo...more

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Mar 25, 2012 Jack rated it 5 of 5 stars

An amazing novel that was so raw and vivid and very very real that i felt embarassed at how intimately i was linked with the characters.

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Mar 13, 2009 Chris Ingram rated it 4 of 5 stars

Great novel, slow to start but rolls along well. A good book about some harrowing subjects with a nice romance going on.

Like a violent version of love in a time of cholera

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Mar 03, 2009 James Wilkinson rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book is a bit of a mixed bag really. The romance is quickly introduced and proceeds with relative alacrity, but the essence of it left me unconvinced. The standout part of the whole novel is Wraysford's time in the trenches during the Great War. I have never read a book that has ever given me a clearer idea of what this battlefield was like, and the horrors that these men lived through and then carried with them. It is some of the most powerful writing I have seen, and the chilling coldness...more

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Apr 06, 2013 Larry rated it 4 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Sebastian Faulks’ Birdsong, set in World War I, is a devastatingly emotional account of the effect of senseless combat on the souls and bodies of soldiers. Had I not just recently read Karl Malantes’ Matterhorn (fiction) and What It’s Like to Go to War (non-fiction), I might have said it was the best of its genre.

The story follows the life of Stephen Wraysford, a young Englishman, who is swept up in World War I. Being an educated and intelligent young man, he quickly became an officer, leading h...more Sebastian Faulks’ Birdsong, set in World War I, is a devastatingly emotional account of the effect of senseless combat on the souls and bodies of soldiers. Had I not just recently read Karl Malantes’ Matterhorn (fiction) and What It’s Like to Go to War (non-fiction), I might have said it was the best of its genre.

The story follows the life of Stephen Wraysford, a young Englishman, who is swept up in World War I. Being an educated and intelligent young man, he quickly became an officer, leading his men in horrendous combat experiences – all while he gradually loses his grip on the meaning of life and reality.

He knows he was not a popular officer: “He found it difficult to think of words of encouragement or inspiration when he himself did not believe there was a purpose to the war or an end to it in sight.”

He confides to a fellow officer: “This is not a war, this is an exploration of how far men can be degraded. I am deeply curious to see how much further it can be taken; I want to know…There is no depth to which the [the troops] can’t be driven. You see their faces when they go into rest [behind the lines] and you think they will take no more, that something in them will say, enough, no one can do this. But one day’s sleep, hot food and wine in their bellies and they will do more.”

After a particularly brutal battle, in which the English troops were horrendously slaughtered, with thousands of dead and wounded strewn across the battlefield, the guns finally fell silent. Another officer asked Stephen if he could “hear it”.

“Now, as he listened, he could hear what Weir meant: it was a low, continuous moaning. He could not make out any individual pain, but the sound ran down to the river on their left and up over the hill for half a mile or more. As his ear became used to the absence of guns, Stephen could hear it more clearly: it sounded to him as though the earth itself was groaning.”

Throughout this horrendous experience of war, the surviving troops could only cope by blocking out or trying to ignore the brutal reality. One of Stephen’s friends takes a walk through a village where troops just coming out of combat were regrouping, where he saw: “…snorting horses, the shouting NCOs and the little groups of smoking, laughing soldiers, like a boy in a dream. What happened a few miles away was kept secret. None of these men would admit that what they saw and what they did were beyond the boundaries of human behaviour. You would not believe, Jack thought, that the fellow with this cap pushed back, joking with his friend at the window of the butcher’s shop, had seen his other mate dying in a shell-hole, gas frothing in his lungs. No one told; and Jack too joined the unspoken conspiracy that all was well, that no natural order had been violated.”

Stephen also knew there was no way someone who had not experienced this horror could ever understand it. He saw this when he went back to England on leave, stepping off the boat into a crowd of civilians: “Stephen saw the looks on the faces of the crowd change from gaiety to bewilderment: for those come to greet sons or brothers these were the first returning soldiers they had seen. The lean, expressionless creatures who stepped ashore were not the men with gleaming kit and plump smiles who had been played aboard by regimental bands…They were frightening to the civilians because they had evolved not into killers but into passive beings whose only aim was to endure.”

Stephen’s final combat experience, in the days before the armistice, is nail-biting. During the trench warfare, both sides would dig tunnels under no-man’s land, heading toward the opposing army’s lines where they would then set off huge explosions. But often, those digging the tunnels would discover an enemy tunnel. Subsequently, soldiers would be killed fighting in the tunnels or buried alive as explosives were used destroy the enemy’s tunnel. Stephen is among a group sent down in the tunnels in the final days, only to become trapped – and desperately waiting for a rescue team. He is eventually rescued, by not by those he expected, nor with a result he would have expected. In a few tense moments, two enemies rediscovered their common humanity.

The novel alternates between Stephen’s experiences in WWI, and the efforts of his granddaughter in the 1970s to learn what happened to him. She eventually finds his war journal, written in a code, which a friend finally solves. In the journal, Stephen concludes: “I have tried to resist the slide into the unreal world, but I lack the strength. I am tired. Now I am tired in my soul. Many times I have lain down and I have longed for death. I feel unworthy. I feel guilty because I have survived. Death will not come and I am cast adrift in a perpetual present…No child or future generation will ever know what this was like. They will never understand. When it is over we will go quietly among the living and we will not tell them…We will seal what we have seen in the silence of our hearts and no words will reach us.”

In summary, I highly recommend this book. If it has a shortcoming, the opening chapters spend a bit too much time on a pre-war romance that plays an important role in the story, but could have been addressed a little more quickly. But the portrayal of the individual and social costs of war will stay with the reader for a long, long time.
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Mar 30, 2013 Lian Sing rated it 5 of 5 stars

I don’t think I could say I enjoyed reading this book. It was full of reminders of the tragedy of reality, and vivid descriptions of the horrors of war that people who know about them try to hide from the more fortunate generations. Reading this was, I think, more of a life-changing experience, in terms of my perspective in life.

The style that the author used in writing Birdsong made it relatively easy to understand. There weren’t much highfalutin words, and the way the words were put together m...more I don’t think I could say I enjoyed reading this book. It was full of reminders of the tragedy of reality, and vivid descriptions of the horrors of war that people who know about them try to hide from the more fortunate generations. Reading this was, I think, more of a life-changing experience, in terms of my perspective in life.

The style that the author used in writing Birdsong made it relatively easy to understand. There weren’t much highfalutin words, and the way the words were put together made the setting realistic and very imaginable, and at the same time, added enough drama to create an interesting story. I loved the use of metaphors, and the way that the author used all of characters’ senses to describe where they were and how they were feeling, especially in those climactic moments such as the first time Isabelle and Stephen made love to each other, or the night before the battle in Somme. The words rung in my bones, and the feelings with it echoed throughout my whole skeleton.

The atmosphere from each part (there are seven parts spanning three generations) is very distinct; part one gave off a romantic atmosphere, especially by the choice of words of the author who described the setting with flowery words. The parts that were set in the trenches, or in No Man’s Land, were, of course, grave and noisy, and I was always nervous whenever I was reading through those parts. It was described that there was a constant disturbance caused by the shell bombardment that happens on a daily basis that the men have become so accustomed to hearing them as though they were but singing birds (pun intended.) There was also this never-ending fear that the soldiers felt that I too felt a share of while I was reading.

One of the things I loved the most about this novel was theme on life, death, and mortality. There was this particular line that goes, “The tenderest parts of his imagination shamelessly embodied, even these would not outlast or rise above some forlorn, unspiritual end in the clinging earth.” It was the harsh reminder that one day, we will all become the soil that we have been living on, and there was nothing on this earth that could prevent us from turning into dust. There were also several moments during the war when Stephen pondered on the thought of his own death, and how it seemed so much more compelling than the cruel earth that he lives in. He couldn’t seem to let go though; there was something keeping him here, as seen when he had his first near-death experience. It was hope- hope for many things, I think. Hope for peace, for humanity. Maybe even hope for self-redemption. I think it was this hope lingering at the back of his mind that kept him going.

On the other hand, I found the parts set in 1978-1979 to be awfully boring- I was bored by the characters featured there, partially because I was too absorbed by Stephen’s story to care about these people, but also because the characters didn’t really have substance. Elizabeth was so… absent, to me, and Robert was plain uninteresting. I also didn’t really feel their love for each other, which kind of didn’t justify why they spent so much time together despite Robert being married. I know this era just served as a means for Faulks to tell the readers about how Stephen’s story ended. I wish he’d done without it though. I would have enjoyed drawing my own conclusions from the implications he left in the other parts, or he could’ve tried a different way of conveying it to us. The way the peace in 1978 cut off the momentum of the other parts was pretty damn annoying and anti-climactic.

This book is definitely a masterpiece. It might not appeal to some people, but it really is worth the read. I was really moved, and I had learned much after reading it. When I turned the last page of the book, I felt as though something had died and had been resurrected into something different, something… life-changing.

Birdsong is beautifully written. It has a captivating plot, interesting characters, and emotions so real they will bury themselves in your hearts.(less)

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Feb 23, 2013 Stuart rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fiction, fiction, war, romance, europe

An exceptional read. Author Sebastian Faulks renders his characters as imperfect, romantic, and vividly human as possible. Their humor, failings, and suffering are at once specific to them and also immensely relatable. It may not be a realistic novel in the sense of details and facts. It is entirely realistic in its portrayal of human nature and all the ugliness and beauty implied. “Birdsong” reminded me of why the most memorable stories of war are found not in cinema but in literature. Film for...more An exceptional read. Author Sebastian Faulks renders his characters as imperfect, romantic, and vividly human as possible. Their humor, failings, and suffering are at once specific to them and also immensely relatable. It may not be a realistic novel in the sense of details and facts. It is entirely realistic in its portrayal of human nature and all the ugliness and beauty implied. “Birdsong” reminded me of why the most memorable stories of war are found not in cinema but in literature. Film forces its viewers to see the despair and insanity of war, but novels make you think about it.

The story itself is not terribly unique, even with the added gimmick of protagonists from three different generations. It begins as an erotic love story between a young Englishman, Stephen, and a (slightly) older Frenchwoman, Isabelle. The seduction and sensuality come at the reader almost instantly – if you didn't know what you were getting into, you'd have to no idea what the book was actually going to be about.

Most of the novel focuses on Stephen the soldier, and several fellow English infantrymen and engineers, fighting in the trenches of France and Belgium. Particular emphasis is on the role of miners, digging hundreds of feet beneath the front lines. Those who descend to the dark depths, in order to circumvent rival German miners and to place explosives beneath the enemy, suffer in turn from claustrophobia, explosions, and cave-ins. It's harrowing stuff, and Faulks spares no effort in making this netherworld shockingly detailed for the reader.

He also spends a great deal of time portraying the relationships among soldiers, and their commitments to one another. With death, it matters because we, the reader, understand the powerful attachment the protagonists possess. Then there are the letters the English soldiers write to their loved ones. Many of the letters are included in full, the content of which ranges from the trivial to the tragic. Such details are just another component of the persistent atmosphere that distinguishes “Birdsong.”

The novel's parallel plot concerns Elizabeth, an English woman in the 1970s. Her's is compelling for its own reasons. As she slowly learns more and more about a grandfather she never knew, she realizes there's very little about England's “lost generation” - the untold hundreds of thousands of men who died during World War I – she does know. Her's mirrors the reader's own discovery of the stark inhumanity of a very human experience.

No doubt these sections remove the reader from the novel's prevailing narrative in an at-times jarring fashion. The fact that the novel ends with Elizabeth in the 1970s, rather than with the war's aftermath or any of that era's characters, was initially unfulfilling. Upon consideration, I think it is entirely appropriate. There is a moment when Elizabeth, in effect for the first time, understands the human cost of the First World War. She doesn't realize this because of a history book or a relative, but by actually visiting one of the many cemeteries for English soldiers on the Continent. When she realizes that the many thousands of engraved names she sees are just for one particular moment of a very long war, she wonders, aghast, why nobody had told her just how horrible it had been. Like Elizabeth, the reader comes to better appreciate the enormity of it all. (less)

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Jan 31, 2013 Stevedutch rated it 4 of 5 stars

Birdsong is the record of one man’s experience of the trenches in the First World War. It begins 4 years prior to the war's beginning when 20-year-old Stephen Wraysford, the man in question, travels to a town in Northern France to research aspects of French industry for his employer back in Britain. He stays at the house of a French factory owner, Azzaire, a man of dubious character but some distinction in his local community, who is married to a much younger woman, Isabelle; the step-mother to...more Birdsong is the record of one man’s experience of the trenches in the First World War. It begins 4 years prior to the war's beginning when 20-year-old Stephen Wraysford, the man in question, travels to a town in Northern France to research aspects of French industry for his employer back in Britain. He stays at the house of a French factory owner, Azzaire, a man of dubious character but some distinction in his local community, who is married to a much younger woman, Isabelle; the step-mother to his teenaged children, Lisette and Gregoire. Very quickly Wraysford senses that all is not as harmonious in his host’s household as his host would like him to believe and feels himself drawn towards the beautiful and enigmatic Isabelle with whom he begins a brief but intensely passionate love affair. The affair, which mirrors in microcosm, in its effects on the lives of the main characters in the book, the cataclysmic events about to engulf the world at large, is like an earthquake that shatters the seemingly granite façade of the Azzaire household the aftershocks of which echo throughout the remainder of the story.

Birdsong is, though rightly popular, a good but not great novel. The faults in its structure could have been so easily avoided by a more ruthless and visionary editor, ridding it of an entirely unnecessary subplot involving the hero’s grand-daughter, that simply undermines the near faultless and believably written opening sections. Nevertheless, it offers a convincing view of life in a provincial French town immediately prior to the outbreak of the war. Likewise, the writing that describes the everyday existence of the front line troops on both sides powerfully evokes the sense of alienation that must have been felt by all who lived through the utter horror visited upon ordinary lives and families by the obscene dynasties and psychotic personalities that composed the archaic ruling houses of Europe immediately prior to the outbreak of the war to end all wars.
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Jan 25, 2013 Jane Hoppe rated it 2 of 5 stars

Review Birdsong: A Novel of Love and War

If you want to read a gripping, graphic account of World War I soldiering in the tunnels and trenches of northern France, Sebastian Faulks’ Birdsong is your book. If you want to read a love story framed around World War I, skip Birdsong. Its subtitle, A Novel of Love and War, is a bit misleading as the novel is light on the love part. A more apt, though clunkier, subtitle could be a novel of attempted love numbed by war.

At various points, Faulks mentions...more Review Birdsong: A Novel of Love and War

If you want to read a gripping, graphic account of World War I soldiering in the tunnels and trenches of northern France, Sebastian Faulks’ Birdsong is your book. If you want to read a love story framed around World War I, skip Birdsong. Its subtitle, A Novel of Love and War, is a bit misleading as the novel is light on the love part. A more apt, though clunkier, subtitle could be a novel of attempted love numbed by war.

At various points, Faulks mentions birds to thread this theme through Birdsong, for example, “In the wonderful quiet, when the German guns had stopped, they heard the song of a blackbird.” Perhaps he means to imply that main character Stephen Wraysford’s ability to love takes flight or sings like a bird after the war. In my opinion, this symbolic bird never leaves the nest. Wraysford tries to love, but seems unable due to a vacuum of love in his childhood and then the horrors of war. He remains a grounded dodo bird.

Although I don’t see birdsong as metaphor for love here, I can see—but only with camo-covered field binoculars—how love fits in the subtitle. It’s not in a traditional, romantic sense. This novel shows love’s imperfection, and then on top of that, what a mess we make of love, including fighting battles that steal any hope that love is even possible. Faulks gives us a contrast of war’s inhumane coldness and the passion/security he calls love. He also gives us wildly contrasting views of intensity: sexual passion and unthinkable atrocities. One is doing everything that feels good; the other is doing nothing that feels good—and in my opinion, Faulks presents both as immoral.

Birdsong is not a book I like. It is a book I respect, however. Faulks starts the pages crackling with passion of two young lovers in 1910 and ends them in 1979 with flat facts bequeathed to subsequent generations by the lovers’ destructive betrayals. In between, he bloodies the pages with graphic World War I live action. Stephen Wraysford, the character linking 1910 with 1979, seems a joyless drifter from beginning to end. Nearly all 483 pages are about him; yet I did not sense I ever knew him, despite having read many of his emotional responses to both love and war actions in the novel. I found it hard to care, even when war seemed to develop his conscience and mature his view of love.

What seems more like the main character in this novel is the war itself. In much the same way that Tim O’Brien’s July, July reunion account lapses into vivid Vietnam War flashbacks, nonwar parts of the Birdsong story seem but vehicles to shout, “War is hell.” And Faulks powerfully communicates this message with graphic details of war strategies and failed plans, soldiers’ grisly injuries and deaths, and soldiers’ emotional coping mechanisms.

Strategies like using tunnels and trenches were educational for me. Reading about limbs being blown off and much worse was extremely difficult for me. At times I had to turn away. (Maybe that was the point.) And then the wartime narrative dragged tediously on and on. (Another point, since the war rumored to be over any battle now lasted four years?) Learning about men’s emotions in the midst of this unthinkably inhumane saga was what changed me.

My ancestors who saw World War I action are gone, but now I have an inkling why my father and a former boss, who both saw World War II action, teared up and could not talk about their experiences. I want to cry just thinking about the horror they’ve held inside all these years if they have seen even half of what Stephen Wraysford saw. He never really recovered from that war. My father and employer, however, soldiered bravely on in civilian life to overcome and become productive, positive, well-rounded, generously loving men. I appreciate what they overcame to accomplish this even more now that I’ve read this novel.

That I appreciated this book without liking it is to Faulks’ credit. His portrayal of the men’s brave perseverance through war’s horrors is inspiring. Soldiers braced themselves for death at any time, whether entering a tunnel, crouching in a trench, or running into shell fire toward German barbed wire. I felt claustrophobic just reading about being in the tunnels. So many exploded and collapsed, burying alive many of the novel’s characters. I also found the soldiers’ disciplined obedience interesting. Unless I missed it, no soldier spoke of World War I’s big picture or international politics. There seemed no overarching, grand philosophical purpose for their sacrifices—just uncompromising obedience to military superiors. Their country had entered this war; that was reason enough to fight.

I was touched by the loneliness enforced by the delicate balance of bonding with men you knew might die any moment. One recurring emotion was the isolation soldiers felt when their loved ones could not understand war horrors. They wanted to shake the numbness—maybe talking about it would help—but they learned no one wanted to listen, and furthermore, how could they understand?

You might be able to understand better after reading Birdsong.
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Jan 21, 2013 Michael Fraser rated it 4 of 5 stars

Really good.
A fairly ambitious work spread across three chronological time-periods. I found two of the three extremely compelling and even the third was generally good.
Faulks has a particular talent for well-drawn characters. Even those such as the German doctor turned engineer, who appears for only a few pages, are usually fully formed and full of life.
Faulks narrative become overwrought on occasion (priest throwing away his rosary after watching the advance during the battle of the Somme) bu...more

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Dec 28, 2012 Iceman rated it 4 of 5 stars

França, 1910, Stephen Wraysford é enviado pela sua empresa a França a fim de observar junto da família Azaire o negócio de texteis desta, sobretudo no sentido de perceber o processo de fabrico.

Instalando-se na casa dos Azaire, Stephen inicia o seu estudo da indústria ao mesmo tempo com que vai se relaconando com todos os membros e amigos da família, contudo esse ralacionamento torna-se mais íntimo com Madame Azaire, Isabelle, que como era algo comum na época, havia sido obrigada a casar com um h...more França, 1910, Stephen Wraysford é enviado pela sua empresa a França a fim de observar junto da família Azaire o negócio de texteis desta, sobretudo no sentido de perceber o processo de fabrico.

Instalando-se na casa dos Azaire, Stephen inicia o seu estudo da indústria ao mesmo tempo com que vai se relaconando com todos os membros e amigos da família, contudo esse ralacionamento torna-se mais íntimo com Madame Azaire, Isabelle, que como era algo comum na época, havia sido obrigada a casar com um homem rico e mais velho, não tendo por isso um casamento pleno e de acordo com o que a força da juventude exigia...

Nos seus 20 anos, Stephen conquista por completo Isabelle (8 anos mais velha), acabando por se envolverem de uma forma tórrida, deixando atrás deles um rasto de infâmia e humilhação.

Anos depois estala a Grande Guerra (1914-1918) e é precisamente a guerra a principal intérprete do livro.

Stephen é incorporado no Exército Expedicionário britânico e enviado para França conjuntamente com milhares de compatriotas imbuidos por um sentido altruista que visava a paz no mundo e a elevação do império britânico a maior portência mundial.

Que utopia!

Sobrevivendo nas toscas e nauseabundas trincheiras, Stephen irá acreditar na existência física do inferno, observando uma guerra insana, completamente ausente de lógica e capacidade em retirar todos e quaisquer sentimentos aos seres humanos.

É impressionante o relato dos movimentos dos batalhões. Pungente a pequenez e a indeferença que a vida humana tomou. A forma como é descrito os combates, os assaltos onde milhares de homens morrem, alguns deles simplesmente pulverizados sem o corpo para enterrar. Corpos abandonados no campo de batalha (terra de ninguém), decompostos a céu aberto, servindo de alimento aos incontáveis ratos e corvos.

Há descrições horríveis, como por exemplo um assalto a uma trincheira alemã onde na confusão do assalto, os homens dão-se conta de estar a pisar lama e restos de carne em decomposição...

Obviamente que como pano de fundo há a tal história de Stephen e Isabelle. Porém vai mais longe, o livro abrange três gerações apanhando, já em 1978, Elizabeth, neta de Stephen que se interessa pela história do avô, sobretudo porque se dá conta de ele ter estado numa guerra tão distante do tempo e cuja História é algo aparentemente escondida, como se esta guerra fosse para esquecer.

Mais do que a história de Stephen, Isabelle ou Elizabeth, este livro é uma descrição pura e dura da desumanidade desse conflito e do quanto infuenciou negativamente toda uma geração de homens que, ao sobreviveram áquela guerra e às recordações daí resultantes, desejaram terem ficado sepultados juntos dos seus camaradas, os únicos que os compreendiriam.

Um excelente documento sobre a I Grande Guerra.(less)

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About Sebastian Faulks

Faulks is the son of Pamela (Lawless) and Peter Ronald Faulks, a Berkshire solicitor who later became a judge. He grew up in Newbury. His mother was both cultured and highly strung. She introduced him to reading and music at a young age. Her own mother, from whom she was estranged, had been an actress in repertory. His father was a company commander in the Duke of Wellington's Regiment, in which h...more Faulks is the son of Pamela (Lawless) and Peter Ronald Faulks, a Berkshire solicitor who later became a judge. He grew up in Newbury. His mother was both cultured and highly strung. She introduced him to reading and music at a young age. Her own mother, from whom she was estranged, had been an actress in repertory. His father was a company commander in the Duke of Wellington's Regiment, in which he served from 1939 to 1946. He saw action in Holland, France, Tunisia, Italy (at the Anzio landings), Syria and Palestine. He was wounded three times and awarded an immediate MC after an action against the Hermann Goering Parachute Troops in North Africa in 1942.
His maternal grandfather, Philip Henry Lawless, enlisted in the 1st Battalion, 28th county of London Regiment, otherwise known as The Artists' Rifles in 1914, and served in trench warfare on the Western Front until 1917, when he moved to the 26th Battalion Middlesex Regiment and finished the war in Salonika. He was decorated several times and received the Military Cross in 1918, the standard Victory Medal, the British War Medal and the 1914 Star. He eventually left the Army and returned to work as a wine merchant - his father's original occupation.[2]
His paternal grandfather, Major James Faulks (Major was his name, not a military rank) was an accountant who had previously worked as a schoolmaster at a private boarding school in Tunbridge Wells, while Major's provisions merchant father, William Robert Faulks, supplied dairy products in late Victorian Paddington.[2]
Faulks' father wanted him to become a diplomat. He claims his first ambition was to be a taxi driver until at the age of fifteen, while reading George Orwell, he decided to become a novelist instead. In fact, he is the only member of his paternal family not to be a lawyer; his father and uncle were judges and his brother Edward is a QC specialising in medical negligence.
Faulks was educated at the fee-charging Wellington College and studied English at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he won an open exhibition and to which he was elected an honorary fellow in 2007. He took a teaching job at the Dwight-Franklin International School after university while also moving into journalism, becoming a features writer for the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph, and was recruited by the Independent as Literary Editor in 1986. He became the Deputy Editor of the Independent on Sunday before leaving in 1991 to concentrate on writing. He has been a columnist for The Guardian (1992-8) and The Evening Standard (1997-9).
He continues to contribute articles and reviews to a number of newspapers and magazines and to broadcast regularly. He wrote and presented the Channel 4 series Churchill's Secret Army, about the wartime Special Operations Executive (SOE), screened in 1999. Faulks is a team captain on BBC Radio 4's literary quiz The Write Stuff.
Faulks lives with his wife, Veronica (formerly his assistant at The Independent), and their three children William, Holly and Arthur . He works from his study in a top floor flat of a house near Holland Park Avenue, ten minutes from his home, starting work at 10am and finishing at 6pm, regardless of whether he is writing a book or not.
He was appointed a CBE in the Birthday Honours List 2002 for "services to Literature" and he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1994.
Faulks supports West Ham United. He writes about this in "Upton and Other Parks," a contribution to the 1990 football book Saturday's Boys.

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