Rating: 
Summary: Moving account of the tragedy of WWI - educational.
Review: I appreciated the focus on a war that many of us don't seem to know much about. I can't believe WWII was fought after understanding the terror and misery of the first one. I found that some of the characters and scenes diminished the quality of the novel. The 1970's portion was not very well-written or satisfying in its plot. The book has a poor ending which focuses on Robert of all people. I do however agree that it is a novel of love and war - how war changes love forever for Stephen and how war makes him love and be loved like nothing else in his life. For those themes I give it five stars.
Rating: 
Summary: Beautiful and haunting
Review: This is a marvelous story incredibly well-told. The scenes in the trenches will stay with me for a very long time. The final 100 pages are enough to keep you up all night waiting to see how it all comes out. I did not have as big a problem with the modern sections as a lot of other reviewers. I do agree that they are not nearly as textured as Stephen's story but I still came to care a great deal about Elizabeth and what happens to her. I also found the modern story well positioned to break up the war sections. Just when I thought I couldn't take any more death and dying, I was removed from it. The only reason I'm not giving this five stars is that for some reason I didn't feel as strong a connection to Wraysford as I have to charaters in other books. (Inman in Cold Mountain for example). I'm not sure why. I found I liked a lot of the minor characters better: Weir and Jack Firebrace and even Jeanne. The story also made me acutely aware of my ignorance of World War I and sent me to the library to find out more.
Rating: 
Summary: Probably the best novel written on the first world war.
Review: Setting aside the redemption trilogy by Pat Barker, no novel has reached me like this one. Far more involving than All Quiet on yhe Western Front, it's impossible to describe the range of feelings that are encompassed in this work. A masterpiece. Buy it.
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Summary: A must read for everybody.................
Review: As a teenager I hated war, everything about it bored me. This book made me feel selfish and completely ignorant of what my ancestors sacrificed for my family and I. Who am I to so easily forget my grandparents and what they must of suffered, to those woman who not only lost their sons, but also their husbands and the men themselves who went through horrors that make my feel sick to think that my son would ever have to experience it............I will never again think only of ANZAC day as a holiday, I too will be attending the marches. And I have also vowed to find out more about my grandparents/great grandparents. Read this book, it makes you realise that your every day annoyances are so insignificant.
Rating:
Summary: Faulks succombed to a cliche 19th century fate for Isabelle.
Review: Faulks wrote a novel of war masterfully, his erotic writing was captivating and convincing. However he really failed in his treatment of Isabella. First he maims her with a shell: bad girl having deepily satisfying sex outside of marriage. If that isn't enough punishment she falls in love with a German officer and then dies of influenza. Maiming a sexually active woman is something Zola or Hardy would write. This twist on her fate colored my whole opinion of the novel. Surelly he could have found a more original way to dispose of his "woman problem." Giving her over to the enemy would have been dramatic enough.
Rating:
Summary: Birdsong
Review: An excellent novel and very moving. I'm at odds with some of the reader's reviews however. I think the fast foward to the seventies and Elizabeth's voyage of discovery about her grandfather worked very well. It is a journey many British people have made or are just starting to make. After reading the book I found that two of my great, great uncles died on the Somme. I found their names on the Thiepval monument (like Elizabeth)... the first of our family to make the trip out there and trace my fingers around the carved names (funny instinctive reaction). I felt connnected to the past and my family history. Anyway, a really good book.
Rating:
Summary: Convincing and Moving; Some Trouble with Modern Material
Review: I found the love story between Stephen and Isabelle and the relentless Great War combat scenes to be convincing and moving. The whole treatment of Stephen's experiences in the trenches ranks with the best war fiction I have read. The author has some trouble linking this powerful war material with the rest of the novel in a satisfying way. In particular, there are modern scenes involving Stephen's granddaughter that seem to be out of place and slow things down. To be fair, however, there is a very emotional scene near the end of the novel in which the stories of the different generations finally come together. It's very rare for a novel to make me cry, but this one got me a couple of times. Readers who like this novel would probably also enjoy Mark Helprin's A Soldier of the Great War, which is one of the great novels of recent years as far as I am concerned. For seemingly realistic descriptions of combat in another war--World War II--readers might also consider James Jones's Thin Red Line.
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding depiction of WWI and turn-of-the century Europe
Review: I loved this book and consider it to be one of the finest novels that I have read in years. The only thing that kept me from grading it at five stars is that I gave Mark Helprin's "A Soldier of the Great War" five stars and "BirdSong" is just a notch below Helprin's masterpiece. If you are interested in the turn-of-the-century and are a Great War addict, like I am, then you can't go wrong with this book. Faulks' depiction of the French country side is convincing and the love affair between Stephen and Isabelle is very erotic. What makes this book so impressive, however, is the time spent in the trenches. Faulks very accurately paints a picture of the daily life of the First World War soldier, what he experienced in battle, and the utter sense of worthlessness that he felt as the Generals continued to hopelessly send the troops out to block the German machine gun bullets with their chests. The First World War was as close as we have come to the apocalypse and the men who came through it were never the same--perhaps worse off than the ones who perished. The part of the book where Stephen and the German soldier who saves him reach out and hug each other and break down into tears was very moving and I thought that it worked well. I agree that what worked less well were the flash forwards to modern times. All in all, though, a very moving, sometimes disturbing, always extremely readable, fine novel.
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Summary: Birdsong: A Tale of Love, War and the Destiny of the Soul
Review: Living as we do, in an unpredictable, random and often capricious universe, it's too easy to lose faith in some sense of certainty. Precious few are the moments when we find that there is indeed something to hold on to, to believe in, to fight for. And when we do, we see in an instant how we long from the depths beyond our souls for a foothold on the delicate ledge of love. Mr. Faulks has brought us there with his notional precision - a master of nuance and metaphor. Our hero, Stephen Wraysford, spends a week in the French countryside as a guest at the home of a professional colleague where he meets, and falls off the ledge of normalcy, into a deeply passionate love with Mdm. Elizabeth Azaire, the wife of his host. Their time together, like all great loves, is too brief, burns white hot, and reminds us all of things that might have been, if only..... Elizabeth's moral steadfastness and heartfelt obligation to continue to care for her husband's already once motherless children, in whom she see's herself - as well as her own internal compass - separates her from the greatest love she has ever known, Stephen, who, profoundly respectful of his first love, is swept away by the dark undertow of World War I, an event which tore the fabric of the universe. Like all great loves, Elizabeth and Stephen's continues to travel through time and space, beyond the hot metal of guns, around the horn, through the generations, and makes itself known to their granddaughter whose spiritual curiosity unearths it. Pure love, like pure energy, never dissipates; it reappears in new ways and in new places. It reminds us, if we are lucky enough to ever come across it, that like a horse who has finally scented home, we will sprint 'till our veins run dry toward the place we have always known that we belonged, but just realized for the first time. I had the sense while reading that I was being opened up, expanded, carried through, with the wonder of one who is fondling great luminous stones inches from ones fac! e.
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Summary: THIS WILL BE MY FAVORITE BOOK OF THE DECADE
Review: this is, without a doubt, the best book I've read in almost ten years. i read close to foty books in 1997, and this was the novel i loved most. the phrase "sweeping epic" scared me off at first (i heard music in the background), but once i started reading it (for a book club i'm in at the school where i teach), i was entranced by the density, the language, the visual detail. the scenes in the tunnels in france were some of the most real and disturbing in any book i've read, and the last scene on the battlefield is truly heartbreaking. this is a great novel.
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