Rating: 
Summary: ABSOLUTELY BREATHTAKING!
Review: What an amazing first novel. Jonathan Hull deftly captures the human psyche. This man Patrick is so hauntingly real that you immediately feel you're reading someone's diary.The story is about an old WWI vet who looks back on his life and the choices he made. The biggest choice that affected him almost more than the horrendous war was giving up the one woman whom he truly loved. Julia was his best friend's widow. They meet ten years after the war in Paris to honor the WWI dead and gradually discover each other. Though the story is about losing his love, the other part of the story is about being old. The author gives an amazingly accurate picture of what it's like to be old and feeble, lonely and lusty; depending on nurses and doctors to keep you alive. Being hotly attracted to beautiful young women but not being able to do anything about it. However, even though Patrick is now a feeble old man, he still has enough fight and pluck in him to take control of his life; and he never feels sorry for himself. He has a great sense of humor in his old age and he uses it. What a wonderful movie this would make if the right actors were chosen. I'd choose Paul Newman for the older Patrick. This story has the feel of Brideshead Revisited (another great read) with the characters tortured and tragic but fully developed and believable. A must read!
Rating: 
Summary: There's a lot better stuff out there...
Review: Reading some of the positive reviews for this novel, I am a little surprised. Along with descriptions that often seem forced and unnecessary, the dialogue is clunky and sappy - read the first scene b/w Patrick and Julia for a good idea of what it's like. There are MANY better WWI novels out there. A few suggestions would be Helprin's book (mentioned by other reviewers), All Quiet on the Western Front, or Sebastian Japrisot's "A Very Long Engagement" (even in translation it's much more eloquent). I read probably seventy-five novels a year and I would say this is in my bottom five for the last twelve months.
Rating:
Summary: Losing Julia
Review: Losing Julia, written by Jonathon Hull, was one of the best books I have ever read. True I am only seventeen years old, but of all the novels I have ever read in my lifetime this was by far the most touching and most unforgettable. It made me realize how much of our lives we waste on the frivioulous activities of our monotonous daily life. I think that it was most helpful for me to read this book at this moment in my life. Now I can hopefully avoid some of the regret that so wholely filled Patrick Delaney (main character)as he looked back on his life. I recommend this book to everyone.
Rating:
Summary: A Delightful Read
Review: I must admit that being a WW1 history buff makes me favorably prejudiced from the start. However, apart from the sheer enjoyment of reading this well written and well researched book, I was really impressed by Mr. Hull's technical skills. I was dazzled by the way Mr. Hull was able to keep three distinct though related storylines going throughout the book. It reminded me of a Bach three part fugue. The three narratives were Patrick Delaneys old age, his WW1 experiences and Patricks affair with Julia. This are all interwoven though handled seperately. I have seldom had such an enjoyable read and look forward to Jonathan Hulls next effort
Rating: 
Summary: Simply touching
Review: This is a book that intrigued me when I read the excerpt on the cover, and I found it more than fullfilled the initial promise. It is quite touching, thought-provoking and very well written. It gives the reader insights into many life-altering moments and describes the friendship and love that evolve for a very special man. The juxtaposition of a youth in World War I and the life of an elderly man sorting through his memories in a nursing home will touch every reader's heart and deepest emotions. It is a story of courage and honor. I am still thinking about the passage that described Michaelangelo when asked why he had a chisel. His response was that he was going to "free an angel." This passage is representative of the wonderful "nuggets" in Losing Julia, which should be savored slowly. I look forward with great anticipation to reading every subsequent book written by Jonathan Hull.
Rating:
Summary: Remarkable
Review: This book was loaned to me by a friend who raved about it. The parts in the nursing home were a little hard to take since I have had too much personal experience with those recently, but the humor that came out when you least expected it, made me keep reading. I agree with those who said there are many passages worth rereading and remembering and, altho I don't think I am personally capable of that kind of unfulfilled love, I have found myself thinking many times in my life that a few days of that kind of love would be worth a lifetime of the mediocrity that most of us endure in our lovelives for the sake of having a mate. It's a beautiful love story wrapped around one of the most tragic wars in the history of the world and the scenes evoked are as good as those in "Battle Cry", my favorite book about WWII in the Pacific. I thought Hull did a great job of putting himself in the body of an old man since he himself is half the age of the narrator of the book. I hope Hull is working on another one.
Rating:
Summary: An unexpected pleasure!
Review: Jonathan Hull's first novel is sprinkled with small nuggets of wisdom and new reasons to examine and experience our lives to the fullest. "Maybe what life needs is a good soundtrack, especially during the long stretches when nothing interesting is being said. A soundtrack might dignify things a bit, ennobling us with the proper drama and tension and pathos." Some readers might find this tome to be too sacchrine for their tastes but I found it refreshingly hopeful and entertaining. Through disparately separate yet magically melded themes of horrific trench warfare, unrequitted love, and the discovered wisdom of old age the reader is led through one man's lifelong journey of discovery. This novel will certainly remind the boomer generation that our lives are not at all peculiar or unique. Courage, fear, loving and learning are universal qualities that overlap every generation. A great gift for any generation in your family!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent book
Review: This book is a great read. It really pulls you in and won't let go. It gave me insight into a World War I vet and into the life of an old man. I am looking forward to Hull's next novel!
Rating:
Summary: A Lovely Debut
Review: Jonathan Hull has written a lovely debut novel in Losing Julia. It is difficult to portray strong emotions such as grief, love and intense fear without crossing the line into trite and overwrought sentimentality, yet Hull manages to pull it off. Losing Julia is told from the point-of-view of eighty-one year old Patrick Delaney and takes us back through his life as a soldier in the trenches of France in World War I, then ten years later to a chance meeting with his best friend's fiancée, Julia, to the present day. Losing Julia is an elegantly written book about love, the loss of love and the ravages of war on the individual psyche. Although parts of the book can be horrifying, Hull wisely gives us touches of warm-hearted humor as well. The stereotypical "crotchety old man," Patrick is, by turns, poetic and sardonic, but he is always lovable. In the hands of a lesser writer, Losing Julia might have easily become melodramatic...the stuff of a television daytime soap opera, but Hull's writing is so good, so elegant, so classy, that most readers will find they can't help but share Patrick's thoughts and want to make them their own. Patrick is certainly no cookie-cutter character. He grows and changes immensely from the time he is a struggling, young poet trying to come to terms with life in the war to the wise and sometimes witty old man in the nursing home. He never has all the answers, but he really doesn't feel he needs them. I found Hull, and Patrick, to be so correct about our tendency to let the present slip by when Patrick says, "I don't think we ever really live in the present; instead, we're either just this side of the past or the future, wavering anxiously between anticipation and recollection." Hull's descriptions of the battle scenes in World War I are filled with detail, although some of them do border on the purple. Of one battle, Patrick's says, "That night in the darkness amid the moans and the lingering smell of cordite I realized that the earth itself was bleeding, its wrists slashed deep down to the arteries along a line called the Western Front. I wondered how long it would take to hemorrhage to death." It's elegant writing, sure, but I really doubt that men in battle think this way. This is not a book that describes war in the graphic way that can be found in Stephen Wright's Meditations in Green, nor is it a book that, I think, that will achieve the staying power of Mark Helprin's sweeping classic, A Soldier of the Great War. It is, however, a warm and wonderful story of love and friendship, of loss and gain, and, although the ending is a bit unbelievable, the character of Patrick is still so well-drawn that Losing Julia is an enjoyable and very worthwhile novel.
Rating:
Summary: I'm telling all my pals....
Review: that this is a book they HAVE to read. I'm with (agree) the woman from Sonoma who said she had marked favorite passages. I too will get my own copy. I finished the library copy in the wee hours of the morning...4am, but alas, it was daylight savings that morn and I had an extra hour to GO BACK and reread those pages I had earmarked. (there is NOTHING 'Madison County' about this book! *eyes rolling*) Sorry, I don't know how to make italics here but one of the shorter passages would be: "That night in the darkness amid the moans and the lingering smell of cordite I realized that the earth itself was bleeding, its wrists slashed deep down to the arteries along a line called the Western Front. I wondered how long it would take to hemorrhage to death. A few more months? A year at the most?" Don't pass up this book...read it, let it affect you...enjoy. Jonathan Hull, thank you.
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