Rating: 
Summary: an ambitious youth sees the face of death
Review: This is one of the most powerful autobios that I ever read. The author, who went on to become a great journalist and the mother of an important female politician in England (Shirley WIlliams), presents an intelligent and reasoned view of love and loss as an energetic youth. COnvinced of her talent and the solidity of her first love, she approaches the Great War with confidence and purpose, only to feel in the end that she lost almost everything she held dear. She finds the strength to move on, of course, which is as moving as her chapters on suffering and naive faith in her abilities and strength. It is also beautifully written.Warmly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: An unforgettable Story
Review: This is the only book that upon finishing, I turned back to the
first page and started reading again. I am currently reading it
for the fifth time. It is a unique story by one who suffered a
most unbelievable tragedy. It is also a picture ot the world just
prior to the cataclysm of 1914, duirng and after. It is actually
a book in three parts. Part 1 deals with the role and status of
English women prior to 1914. Part 2 details the 1st World War
tragedy from a woman's perspective. Vera Brittain lost her fiancee,
brother and the only two other male friends she had. Part 3
details how she regained a life after the war and how she
became involved in English political and social issues. She was
a most remarkable woman and in my opinion not given the credit
she truly deserves. "Testament of Youth" is the most incredible,
unique masterpiece imaginable.
Rating:
Summary: A classic
Review: To put it simply, Testament of Youth is the finest memoir I've ever come across, and one of the best books of any kind I've read in the last few years. As the other reviewers have noted, it is powerful, fascinating and heartbreaking. I'd just like to that Vera Brittain's frequent use of irony is absolutely delicious.
Rating:
Summary: The Human Face of World War I
Review: Vera Brittain has shamed me for not knowing more about the history of World War I, a fault which I am working to remedy. This book should be required reading in every American High School and University, and should sell from stands everywhere. Vera Brittain puts a human face on the War as one who has served her country as a volunteer nurse and who has witnessed the horrors and atrosities of war, from both Allied and enemy sides. Outrage grips the reader who, after becoming intimately acquainted with Vera, her fiancee, her brother Edward, and two male friends with whom she corresponds out of kindness, are killed in this war. Vera recounts her sorrows and struggles in attempting to rebuild a 'normal' life, but who is forever changed by her war experiences. Valiantly determined to make certain the horrors of the War are never repeated in the future, she befriends one Winifred Holtby, and they unite in their quest to promote peace in the world. It is most touching that Vera bore no animosity towards those who killed her loved ones, and her magnanimous spirit even prevailed as she nursed enemy soldiers in the hospitals on the Front. Indeed, 'Testament of Youth' is a testament of humanity's better angel spirit which can prevail if we are to learn from the tragedies of the past. I definately completed the book with a bad taste in my mouth about war.
Rating:
Summary: An inspiring, heartbreaking, unforgettable book.
Review: Vera Brittain is not always easy to like. She's frequently disagreeable, usually opinionated, always challenging. But she also has more courage, strength and vision than most people you will ever encounter. As part of the first generation of women to achieve a university education in England, she put her studies aside to volunteer as a nurse on the front lines of World War I. This seminal event in world history profoundly altered her philosophy as she suffered the heartbreak of losing the two men she loved most in the world. Her triumph over tragedy should be inspiring to anyone who has ever lost a loved one, as she turned her grief and anger at the war into a lifelong committment to the cause of pacifism. Brittain is a beautiful writer with a sharp wit and an incisive mind. Her portrayal of the brutality of war and the tragic consequences of "God and country before all" makes for perhaps the most powerful anti-war book ever created. This is not only a testament to youth, but also to the courage and resiliancy of the human spirit.
Rating:
Summary: Superb first-hand account of a young woman in WWI
Review: Vera Brittain used diamond-hard sentences to relate the transitions of her life. Within a span of just a few years she went from being a pampered middle-class girl to being an unwanted female student at Oxford (women in those years were given no credit towards a degree for the academic work they did) to nursing shattered victims of war in field hospitals. The final transition, perhaps the cruelest of all, was her return to Oxford to find that women only a few years younger than she thought her struggles and suffering (the death of every male friend/lover/sibling) a joke.
Rating: 
Summary: World War I from a female perspective
Review: Vera Brittain's work remains an important document in history, because it's one of the most well-known personal accounts of the First World War by a woman. Her "testimony" is moving, direct, and informed by an urgency which makes up for her sometimes florid prose. Brittain's account highlights the difficult position in which young British women found themselves during the War, caught between the desire to do something significant towards the war effort and cultural and social expectations of women's proper roles. More than anything else, Brittain's work is an eloquent testimony to the rage she and many young women like her felt towards the war and the society which it engendered it.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating Memoir (with Romance) by a Middle-Class Woman
Review: Very fascinating account of war-time Europe, this book also gives you a glimpse of life during the fast-changing times before and after
the death of Queen Victoria. Every reader will be drawn into the honest and readable writing
style of Vera Brittain, who remembers the time of WWI when she
served as a nurse. As many other reviewers say, her momoir is simply stunning and even shocking in its description of her experiences during the tribulations. Though the some
descriptions about the hot, (or chilling) dirty hospitals, wailing patients, or stupid supervisers are understandably subdued, her feelings reacting to these surroundings are always touching, and sometimes even with some witty remarks. On top of that, I was impressed with her daily way of life, which expeienced the rigid Victoraimism before the comrapatively free, modern post-war era. Some episodes are remarkable in telling us how a young woman had to live in a provincial town in England at the turn of the 19th century, when a die-hard Victorian conservative moral codes were still prevalent. In fact, Vera, rather humourously, recounts how travelling alone by train could be inappropriate for a lady at that time, and how she had to arrange the meeting with her love, Roland, using some skills.
Moreover, some readers may find this book interesting in different way;
that is, as this book was written during the time between WW1
and WW2, you get a strange feelings that something is missing from the book that should have been there. For example, Hilter
is mentioned only once, but not the Nazi, and the name of
fascism appears, but very briefly (though she records one
episode in Italy which predicts the future events).
And the League of Nations, for which she passionately devotes
herself, was, as you all know, to collapse. Considering the
book alongside with the history WE know, the book becomes all
the more fascinating just because of the things the book could not tell at the time of writing. And this strange sense leaves me wondering -- "What did Vera
Brittain do during the next world-war?" "How did she respond to
WW2 and possibly other big events in the world?" This is the
reason I didn't give 5 star rating, because the text itself is brilliant, the book gives me little information about the
author (anyway I will find it though, but...). Though a short
introduction by her daughter is attached, we know little about
her, and that is a shame, because this book is deserves much wider
range of readers, from those who remember the war to the students of Victorianism and feminism, and her life would
interest all those readers.
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