Rating: 
Summary: It could have been great!
Review: I started out absolutely loving this book. It
had such texture, the characterizations were rich,
and I was drawn into the story. The love affair
between Stephen and Isabele was different, this
was not your "classic" hero and heroine. The characters are interesting -they are not admirable
- just human. Their love affair is engrossing and when it
ends, abruptly, you want to continue reading to see
what happens. Then the problems begin. The "love affair" section
is over and the "war" portion begins. The love affair
is never reintroduced - that's it folks. The
character of Isabelle is no longer even a part of
the story - we never understand her motivations. Why
did she leave Stephen - why didn't she tell him
about their child? The descriptions of the war are terrific. This is
where the author really reached his stride. Especially
harrowing were the descriptions of the tunnels. But again, there are a number of characters - they
live and they die and you never really get to know
them. I wanted to care about these people - but
there were so many of them and they were really
no more than stick figures. The worst part of the book is when the author introduces
a character in the 1970's. It is jolting to be in the trenches
of WWI on one page and then out of nowhere - in the 1970s.
I don't know why the author decided to use this plot device
it feels so artificial. He introduces a character you don't
know or ccare about. And, even though there is no
motivation for it, she decides to learn more about
her grandfather and WWI. It just totally destroys
any credibility the novel had to this point. And then to
make her pregnant just to have her name her baby after
a character in the war - ugh, what was he thinking!?! I think that if the author had structured the book
differently and developed the characters a little
more (what was that about Stephen's fear of birds?)
this would have been a great book. It's descriptions
of the war alone would have made for a great novel.
I think this author needs to have more confidence in
his ability to carry a story without using cliched
plot devices to "help" it along. He also could use a
good editor!
Rating: 
Summary: This is utter crap
Review: I bought this based on the New Yorker review. Are they becoming People Magazine? This is overwritten--this guy must be a complete nightmare at dinner parties (I imagine the Fremch character who lectures on in part 1 is a self-portrait). This is strictly for the 'Bridges of Madison County' crowd. The New Yorker compared it to the 'English Patient'? Please. They were both paperbacks, that's about it.
Rating: 
Summary: Simply the best novel I have read in a long time
Review: Mr Faulks has portrayed love, war, and suspense in a remarkable manner. He has captured the intimate feelings and thoughts of men at war. The depth of his charactors is astounding and makes one feel that he is there. Mr Faulk, let's have more!!
Rating:
Summary: One of the best war novels of all time
Review: I became more emotionally involved with this book than any other I have ever read. The characters of Birdsong were alive. I lived with them, died with them, and cried with them.
Rating:
Summary: Powerful, moving, often disturbing - a must read!
Review: Having heard the author on NPR I decided to read this novel despite it being on a subject I would normally avoid - The First World War. I was not dissappointed.
This is a powerfully written novel which introduces the principal character through a pre-war romance that highlights the impulsivenes of young love and lust.
We are quickly drawn from the peace and tranquility of pre-war France, into the horrors of a brutal war. A war that highlights the depths to which we can be driven to defend our beliefs, lifestyles, families and countries.
The graphic depiction of life in the trenches, based on actual letters sent home from the front during the war, sends shivers through the reader's spine.
As we become familiar with the people in the story, in the way we meet and understand new friends, we have a small inkling of the sense of loss felt between comrades, as a stray bullet takes another life.
The description of life in tunnels under the trenches is claustrophobic even without the inevitable fighting that adds to the mix.
There is even a thread of mystery about the novel that keeps us guessing right to the end.
This is so powerful it is, at times, deeply moving. A novel that makes us think about the world we live in and the world we want for our children.
It also gives new meaning to generations of people who have little understanding of the attrocity of this war.
This is a novel you will want ro recommend to your friends.
Rating:
Summary: Harrowing, Passionate, Unforgettable!
Review: This is so beautiful. One of the best books I've ever read. Read it, you won't get disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: WW1 at its Best (so to speak)
Review: This was a wonderful book. The love story part did drag a little here and there, but it was more than made up for by the superlative writing about life in the trenches. And the love story was a good balance to that story, so overall it worked. A must read for anyone who likes historical fiction (emphasis on the history) even a little.
Rating:
Summary: A NOVEL OF MOVING GRANDEUR
Review: Faulks brilliantly exposes society's inhumanity to man in this outstanding novel. He captures the way in which the war took over "good" and "bad" men's souls, and stole from them reason to live, finally degenerating them to primitive living corpses
Rating: 
Summary: It's three, three, three books in one
Review: I have mixed feelings about this book - about all three of them. There was a Love Story - forbidden passions. There was a War Story - the hopelessness of the trenches. And there was a Voyage of Discovery - a person in the present rediscovering the past (the Love Story, the War Story) through conveniently found journals with personal repercussions.
The love story was presented in an almost visual way. I could see that house, those rooms. I knew those people, I could see the play of emotions on their faces - the small glances. I could feel the weight of conventions and the lure of the forbidden. The Love Story seized my imagination. And then it faded. Words unspoken. Choices. Choices I didn't wholly understand since the character had faded and the thought process was no longer shared. I had thought that the Love Story would become intertwined with the War Story. I didn't think that happened very successfully. When the first book began to fade, we started the second book. The second book, the War Story, was the most powerful. Almost tactile. The mud. The fatigue. The smells. The apathy. The hopelessness. And, yes, the horror. The weakest was the Voyage of Discovery. I didn't feel the juxtaposition of current with past worked well in this case - it was jolting. I don't mind at all figuring something out sooner than a character, as long as it is not a LOT sooner. In this case, it was a WHOLE LOT sooner. So a mixed review. Beautiful written, wonderful prose. Good plotting on two of the three distinct elements, but the segues where not as smooth as they might have been
Rating:
Summary: Life--such as it was--in the trenches.
Review: Faulks has done ALL his homework in recreating the unspeakable awfulness that men experienced living (and mostly dying) in the trenches of the Western Front in World War I. Very few people today are able to imagine, let alone articulate as Faulks does, just how diabolical the trenches were, and how reduced men became, both physically and emotionally, to mere animal existence. Faulkes illustrates with depth and colour all the horrors that the British infantry endured, and shows how some men developed loving friendships and loyalties more profound than any prior family or social ties. The reader will hear echoes of the voices and themes of First War authors Edmund Blunden and Siegfried Sassoon in particular, as the lead characters--junior officers and mining engineers--offer in their reasoned narratives a chronicle of bloody endurance without understanding; of alienation from family, society and home; of increasingly grotesque beliefs and behaviours under pressure; of unimaginable fear and diminishing hopes that the war might actually ever end. An accompanying love story between a major character and a Frenchwoman is well written enough to be interesting, yet is very much secondary to the action in the trenches. If you want a graphic, well-paced and absorbing picture of how one man manages to survive the Great War, read "Birdsong." The author has thankfully brought few if any annoying late 20th Century sensibilities to his novel; its integrity as a document of the Great War is virtually uncompromised
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