Rating: 
Summary: Stirring Story of A Love That Transcends A Lifetime
Review: I want to say "Thank you" to Jonathan Hull for writing this mesmerizing story that will surely appeal to both men and women. Patrick Delaney's story is told in three time frames: as an 18-year-old American fighting in France during World War I; ten years later when he meets Julia, the girl his best friend Daniel loves, and as an 81-year-old in a nursing home awaiting death and hoping that his final words are more profound than "Where's my Metamuscil?"From the bloody war scenes to the romantic love scenes, this book offers readers the most intriguing love triangle I have come across in literature. Patrick spends his life struggling between love and loss, having his obsession with Julia change his life, destroy his marriage, but give him something to hope for, something to look back on and smile about. Readers will laugh and cry, often on the same page, as an old man suffers the indignities of impending death yet remembers the high points of his youth. There are so many memorable passages in this book that I literally took a highlighter pen and marked them so I could go back and read certain parts over and over. It's most unusual for me to deface a book in this way, but this is one not only to read for the pure pleasure of the story but also to glean insights from the author's extraordinary reflections on the human spirit. Patrick learns from Julia what really matters in life---having someone to love, being compassionate, being fully alive every day so that you really see and hear and smell and feel things. Julia gives Patrick that chance to never be lonely as her spirit remains with him every day of his life. Share Patrick's life, the deep distress that humanizes him, the humor that sustains him, and the love that he could never forget. I doubt anyone who reads this book will ever forget Patrick or Julia or Daniel---and what the three of them meant to each other.
Rating:
Summary: SHEER GENIUS
Review: I was staggered by this gem of a novel, and regret it was not much longer. Exploring the grand themes of love and loss with pathos and compassion, Losing Julia also entertains with beguiling humor, some of which I thought worthy of Mark Twain. For a young non-combatant, the author does a brilliant job of realistically describing the brutal realities of old age and the Great War. Daniel, Julia, Patrick: Those three-dimensional, poignant, endearing characters will be haunting me for some time. Treat yourself to a breathtaking literary and human experience, and read this wonderful book.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful story!
Review: I had a hard time reading & finishing this novel. And believe me, I am very interested in history; the Great War, and love stories...but this book just seemed false from the get-go. The characters never came alive; they continued to be "novel" versions of true-life people. Especially false was the depiction of Patrick as an old man; especially the scene on the airplane back to France & his conversations with the young lawyer. Old people just don't talk that much in real life, not like Patrick did; they don't remember their struggles so keenly! Something else false was Patrick's brief fixations on various women throughout the novel. That's a young man's POV; it especially didn't ring true as an 81 year old man dying of cancer. Fight against the dying of the light, for sure, but...well, in a novel, try to keep it real. An old man who's dying is concerned about keeping his dignity, not keeping up elaborate flirtations with his nurse. This reader could tell the author was TRYING to write movingly, and to make you feel for these people, but it just didn't work because the characters' whole situation; their lives, etc., their choices, their feelings as *real* persons, seemed so UNreal. It was always obvious that the author did alot of research about the Great War, and old age, but research alone doesn't bring reality to this novel. There are varied passages of beauty in the book, which gives it my 3-star rating, but the story as a whole never adds up to to the creation of living, breathing characters who remain in your memory.
Rating:
Summary: Truly Beautiful
Review: Jonathan Hull's novel Losing Julia was a pleasure to read. The main character, Patrick Delaney is an 81 year old WWI veteran who begins by reminiscing about his life. The reader is treated to beautiful prose and the haunting and provactive questions Patrick asks himself. "Is it better to have loved and lost or never to have loved at all?" "Is it better to have loved well for a short time or to let love grow and mature beyond that perfect phase of utter bliss?" These themes echo throughout the book as Patrick shares his memories from the war which are written with stunning insight and emotion laden detail by Hull. I was lost in the descriptions of the battles and the terrible killing of the war. That something so horrific could take place in our time is always hard to read about. Yet the irony is that it was an event that made Patrick feel the most alive and at the same time killed him inside. Patrick's relationships with his best friend Daniel, his lover Julia, his wife, his children and his friends from the nursing home are all bittersweet and well developed. This story is a composite of one mans life, the choices he made, and the outcomes from those choices. It couldn't be told in a more compelling and beautiful way. A great novel.
Rating:
Summary: Splendid, affecting story...I loved it!
Review: Jonathan Hull's beautifully crafted novel about love and war is superb. The story is told through Patrick Delany's eyes as a 19-year-old foot soldier in the trenches of WWI, as a 29-year-old WWI veteran looking for answers to the never-ending questions of life, and as an 81-year-old great-grandfather in a nursing home. Hull does a wonderful job weaving the narrative through the different phases of Patrick's life; he understands and knows the characters of Patrick, Daniel, and Julia the way any writer should---like he/she knows himself/herself. There are no surprises or unusual twists...the reader knows that Daniel dies, but the manner of his death is still shocking. I literally gasped and had to close the book to adjust to the vivid scene that Hull described. In our quest to honor the veterans of WWII, I think Americans may have forgotten the greater horrors (if possible) of WWI. And it comes as no surprise that Patrick loses Julia, Daniel's lover. But the manner in which the characters get from Point A to Point B and the choices each character makes makes this is one of the best crafted novels to be published in the last five years. It takes a lot of skill to interweave such three timeframes so that the reader is neither lost nor bored. It would have been easy for Hull to descend into the ghastly and ubiquous, but his ability to tell the tale rises well above the ordinary. I plan to use this novel in my Basic Fiction Writing classes as illustrations of the amount and type of descrption, character development and plotting. There is not an unnecessary word or scene in this entire novel. It's a page-turner that will live in my heart for many, many years.
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