Rating: 
Summary: This is as good as anything I've read in English
Review: Faulks tells a whale of a tale in language that brings me near tears with its melody and its beauty. Rarely do even our best writers speak with such clarity, such grace and dignity. Read the story, but listen for the song
Rating: 
Summary: Fair love story. Good WW1 story
Review: A pretty good book overall. Tended to drag somewhat, but captured the trench warfare story very well. I wish the author had developed the civilian storyline more completely, but other than that a good book. I would definitly recommend it to someone else and I am glad I read it
Rating:
Summary: This book is among the best I've read in the last five yars
Review: Reminiscent of Flaubert, the author brings us beautifully to a time and era long gone. It's the kind of book that must be read slowly to appreciate the language, and when a chapter is finished you want to go back and read it all over again! Starting with a tragic love affair and going on to the horrors of WWI, this book is both erotic and revealing... of human emotions and passions which endure forever
Rating:
Summary: Stunning writing in service to a flawed plot
Review: Faulks transports the reader into the trenches of World War I France in a way that stuns and overwhelms. I first read this book while serving as the UN fire chief in Sarajevo, Bosnia during the war, with thousands of mortar rounds a day dropping randomly into the city around us, and snipers, rockets, and mines a part of daily life. Undoubtedly this heightened the impact of the novel, but at the same time the parallel experiences also validated the authenticity of the book's portrayal of the paradoxical terror and offhandedness of everpresent death, and the weariness, and sense of futility, and struggling on with duty regardless.
The opening section, setting up the cross-cultural romantic encounter which supposedly scars the protagonist for life, is not as good, and the unfortunate (and mercifully short) ending is jarring and should be skipped.
Rating:
Summary: A loveless, soul-less man loses himself in the horror of WWI
Review: A hundred feet down the light is nonexistent, all sounds are muffled and the slightest mistake on your part can bring instant
death from ways you fight not to think about. This is life under the trenches in World War I as Welsh miners try to combat
the Germans by digging underground to their trenches and exploding bombs at the same time as Germans dig counter mines and attempt
the same.
Our hero cannot but help lose his soul in this hell brought back from the past by Sebastian Faulks. Never before have I read a book
based on an historical event that brought home the flames, stench, mustard gas, rotting corpses, and sheer terror like this book did
for me. Our man stumbles through this inferno having joined the British forces from the start. It is his emptiness from the love
that he thought he had with the beutiful wife of the patronizing owner of a French textiles mill which haunts him. When his English firm sent him
to France to learn the business he was quickly caught up in the frenzy of a life freed from Victorian constraints before the war.
After he and the mill owner's wife flee with only their love, reality sets in and the old moral code reasserts itself with disastorous results
for the couple. Driven by this event our man staggers forward and empties himself into the inferno of death in the trenches. Becoming an officer in command of the miners it is his job to protect them and see that their job is done well. It is through these long years of the war
that he wrestles with himself and his hollow living corpse.
The prose of Mr. Faulks hits home time after time until you are there sniffing the mustard gas and peering over the edge of the
trench waiting with dread for the sound of the whistle ordering you over the top. For me the dipassionate attitude of the main character was
the only thing that kept from cringing during some of the more particularly graphic description of the fighting in the tunnels.
This book got to me in that way and in many other ways like I have not been before by writing. Is this a book for the classics list? I think not
but for a very good story and in many points in the book some of the most effective writing I've read I would and do reccomend this fine novel.
Rating:
Summary: A flawed, but compelling picture of trench warfare
Review: This book, though, in my view, imperfect in its construction, is nonetheless, a very compelling and frightening portrait of life on the Western Front during the War to end all Wars
The book starts in the Somme region of France in 1910, so you can already guess what battles will be prominently featured in the story. We follow a callow youth as he seduces his host and landlord's wife. As their love consumes them, they decide to run off together, she chucking her boring, bourgeois life, and he, his as yet unmade career as a manufacturer.
She finds herself consumed with guilt at her actions, and leaves her lover in bitterly perfect form to become a killer for the BEF.
The story in its first of many leaps of time jumps to 1914. Our "hero", though that is a difficult term to use shares three and a half years of just unspeakable horror with the reader, enough to satisfy any action/adventure fan.
His growing loss of belief, as well as all the deaths of all the soldiers he know and loves, is shocking and beautifully told, and if we could follow just his story the book would be stronger.
Unfortunately, the author, clearly felt the truth would leave his readers too depressed, and chose to weave in an artless tale of hope told by our soldier's grand-daughter. The cloying last chapter is not only out of place but distracting from the main truth of the book. Mercifully, the scenes set in 1978 are few and forgettable.
Rating:
Summary: horrific yet educational account of trench warfare
Review: Birdsong was given to me by a colleague who said it was "a GREAT book". Judging by its subject matter (World War I) I wouldn't have normally touched it let alone read it (..war novels/films are either too depressing or a thin excuse for some flag-waving). Well I am delighted to have read Birdsong. It's not a great book (in my judgement); it doesn't cover new ground in re-telling the horrors of war. But it is well-structured, moving, and keeps focused on finite (and often forgotten) aspects of the Great War - specifically, trench warfare. Mr. Faulks leaves out nothing in describing the unspeakable horrors our forefathers (..from both sides) have suffered. Absolutely shocking and nausating, yet it's really compulsive reading. While Faulks succeeds in telling the human anguish of those who suffered during the war, he fails in one minor aspect of the novel when he "fast forwards" to scenes of the late 1970s where the granddaughter of a soldier feels compelled suddenly to learn more of her departed grandfather. While the author's heart was in the right place, this minor aspect of Birdsong comes off a bit contrived. Nonetheless I fully recommend Birdsong. It makes for gruesome reading, so it's not for the squeamish. But I hope others will give it a try and, like me, feel as though they learned something new by it.
Rating:
Summary: An intricate rendition of life
Review: The back cover of "Birdsong" does little justice to the great work contained between its pages. The initial story, of Wraysford in France, is a sweet and passionate tale that grips the reader in its intensity. However, the true masterpiece of the novel has to be those scenes concerning the Great War. Perhaps, for American readers accostomed to Hollywood portrayals of insipid and unlikely accounts of life under fire, this novel will seem to lack spirit and entertainment. However, for those with a deeper appreciation of history, and a wider imagination, this book with enthrall, horrify and upset more than a film ever could. Faulks' prose evokes memories of war poets such as Grenfeld and Sassoon, and his story-telling is superb. The detailed descriptions af the trenches, of the miners tunnelling and of the aftermath of shelling are fascinating, and the battle scenes could provoke nightmares. Like some other reviewers, I was slightly disappointed by the final section of the book. However, there were one or two points there which were especially poignant, particularly regarding Wraysford's grandaughter's attempts to find her grandfather's comrades. The pathos of the old men who had been soldiers is hard to ignore. This is certainly the most thought-provoking, moving and incredible book I have read this decade.
Rating:
Summary: A RICH EXPERIENCE (but not perfect)
Review: This book sat on my book shelf for 10 years. I had consistently heard about it from many sources and so gave in and took it on my holiday last week. This book lived up to the hype and made up for the bad weather (Abruzzo in Italy.. rained all week). I had read an earlier book of his and thought it a load of pretentious twaddle (Girl from Lion D'or). The book has a number of startling pieces: the first world war is obvlously dealt with at length, but the most moving parts for me were those that dealt with the love of our children. Jack Firebrace's love for his son John was expressed in a way that fundamentally relayed my feelings for my own children. I was mesmerised and deeply moved as he described his feelings. I was genuinly apalled by the suffering of the ordinary soldiers in the pointless war, and one of the aims of the book I am sure was to make clear what they endured. In that it succeeded. I have often thought about the war as members of my family died on the first days of the fighting in Turkey. On the negative side: I did not at all relate to Stephen the main character. His detachment and self belief are charactersitics I would more associate with a public school boy from a priviliged and wealthy family and not from a lad brought up in an institution. I did feel that the book was overly long, with a number of scenes in the tunnels that could easily have been dispensed with. There was a particularly silly scene of Stephen carrying a bird in a cage and overcoming his fear. I was not taken with the literary devise of the enquiring grand daughter,and not at all interested in her love affair with Robert. I appreciate that this did produce the desired result i.e. a "surrogate" son for Jack Firebrace, but their lives in comparison with those of the soldiers seemed pale and vapid. The London Underground and the descriptions of the tunnels also seemed a little too contrived. However, this is a masterpiece of a novel: moving and evocative. It was not perfect but its richness made up for any flaws in its construction.
Rating:
Summary: Powerful, moving story
Review: Having recently read "All Quiet on the Western Front", it was with some reluctance that I picked up another book that is primarily about the First World War. What swung it for me were the reviews, which were full of phrases like "deeeply moving", "incredibly visceral". However, I am gald that I read the book, and would thoroughly recommend it. Faulks has basically written a novel about the horrors of war. He has tried to mix it up (with varying success) by introducing incidents/characters before and after the war. However, the main guts of the book is the central character's struggle to survive during the slaughter in the mud of Flanders. This is were the book is at its most compelling. Faulks does a superb job in capturing this nightmare. The claustophia of the "underground" chapters is particularly well done. "Enjoy" is the not the right word to describe my reaction to this book. "Respect" is closer to the mark.
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