Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks

The trench warfare of World War One was one of the most insane episodes of human history. Faulks succeeds better than anyone I know in reproducing life in this death, this hell. The carnage, the chaos, the murdering of men’s emotion before dispatching them. There is little hope offered by the story, nor should there be, once we come to understand the meaningless of survival. Love, with Isabelle, will simply be one more casualty for Stephen Wraysford. The depiction of the hopeless tunnels, where to make a sound could bring dark, brutal death, is prodigious writing.