Winter, Jay M. (2006). Remembering War: The Great War Between Memory and History in the Twentieth Century. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. p.40. ISBN 0-300-12752-9. Archived from the original on 5 August 2021 . Retrieved 29 October 2016.

Stephen’s story unfolds alongside that of his granddaughter, Elizabeth Benson, and her own life in London in the late 1970s. Elizabeth is single and fiercely independent. At thirty-eight, she is already the successful manager of a clothing design company, and she is also in love with a married man. Elizabeth is content in her life, despite its challenges, but she feels something is missing. One day, she reads a newspaper article about the anniversary of the 1918 armistice, and it touches a curiosity deep inside her. She knows her grandfather fought in the war, but little else about him. The topic seems too big and out of reach—it happened too long ago and in France—yet thoughts of it linger in her mind. She remembers seeing some of her grandfather’s old journals in her mother’s attic, and she decides to snoop a bit. Alongside the main story, there is the narrative of Stephen's granddaughter, Elizabeth, who, whilst struggling with her already married boyfriend, Robert, unearths Stephen's journals from World War I and seeks to learns about his experiences at Marne, Verdun and the Somme. She discovers that Stephen's journals are encoded, but tries to decipher them. I believe there are novels that affect you long after you have closed the book and I do believe that this is one of them. It was fated for me to read this book (at least I believe it to be so) since as I walked into the library, this book was propped up on the shelf seeming to send a message saying take me home. I listened and am ever so grateful I did take this powerful book home and to heart. Voicing physicality ... Tom Kay as Wraysford and Madeleine Knight as Isabelle in a split-screen online staging Birdsong.Stephen’s love interest throughout the book, Isabelle is the unhappy and abused wife of Rene Azaire. Although she loves Stephen, she does not tell him about the pregnancy and leaves him to return to her sister, Jeanne. After then returning to Rene, she later raises their daughter, Francoise with a German soldier named Max. Shortly after the war, she dies of influenza. Stephen and her sister, Jeanne then raise Francoise. Elizabeth Benson Sebastian Faulks' Birdsong is a kind of Harlequin romance with a literary slant. All the elements for pulp romance are there: "romantic" hero: soldier, refined gentleman; unhappy married woman; "romantic" locale: French suburbs, countryside; numerous, gratuitous sex scenes (I remember, horrifically, an excess of pulsating "members" and curtains of "flesh"). At the same time, Faulks strives to give it some literary taste, which I believe he largely fails to do. The time-jumping between pre-war, at-war, and present-day seems haphazard, and the present-day revelation of Elizabeth Benson has the dull patina of a celluloid ending (I think of present-day Rose in Titanic, the end of Saving Private Ryan, etc: the cinematic cheat of closing a tragedy by removing it from its era, neglecting the interceding lives of its characters: what I hate about epilogues). Faulks wrote the novel partly because he felt that the First World War had not been discussed enough in both literary and historical contexts. [ citation needed] Reflecting on the novel twenty years later, Faulks felt that the published version did not fully do justice to the experience of war: it did not provide readers with "a full appreciation of the soldiers' physical experience; and, perhaps more importantly, a philosophical understanding of what it meant to be part of the first genocidal event of the century – the one that made the others imaginable". [ citation needed]

whenever anyone asks me what my least favourite book is, i always say this, which seems odd considering it's been voted as the 100 best books on a bbc list or whatever it was. a b c Nikkhah, Roya (23 May 2010). "Sebastian Faulks novel Birdsong to be made into West End play". The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 9 October 2016 . Retrieved 30 August 2016. The main Protagonist in the novel is Stephen Wraysford but his granddaughter Elizabeth Benson is a key character in the parallel, more modern narrative. Stephen Wraysford My grandfather (age sixteen) fought in the Argonne forrest and was gassed in WW 1. He was in the trenches and as I read I pictured him there among the rats, the mud, the awfulness of war. Perhaps this connection made the book not just another book about a war, but one that held memories for me of a beloved man who was just a kid fighting a onerous war. René Azaire – Factory owner in Amiens. He states that Stephen will go to Hell for his affair with his wife Isabelle. Embarrassed by his inability to have a child with his wife he beats Isabelle.I would have no hesitation in recommending Birdsong to absolutely anyone, but most especially to any politician who is thinking about sending young people to their deaths in war. At a certain point, I was just as fed up with the war as the soldiers in the story. Elizabeth’s episodes were cleverly inserted by the author to provide me for the breaks like Stephen had during the war. As a child, Faulks attended Elstree School before moving on to Wellington College, where he was the top scholar in 1966. In 1970, he entered an open competition and won a place to read English at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He graduated in 1974. Elizabeth did some calculations on a piece of paper, Grand-mere born 1878. Mum born…she was not sure exactly how old her mother was. Between sixty-five and seventy. Me born 1940. Something did not quite add up in her calculations, though it was possibly her arithmetic that was to blame.”

Leaning, Jennifer (2002). "Review of La Tendresse". British Medical Journal. 325 (7369): 908. doi: 10.1136/bmj.325.7369.908. JSTOR 25452659. S2CID 71468801. Birdsong is a book about the horror of war, particularly trench warfare. During WW1, due to advances in technology and armory, the face of war was changed forever. Tanks, submachine guns, advanced chemical warfare, and wireless communications were used for the first time. Thousands of men died in trenches for each mile of ground gained. Faulks seeks to remind the modern world what war is like and how the trauma it creates echo through the next generations. Birdsong analysis: the theme of war Norwegian novelist Jacobsen folds a quietly powerful coming-of-age story into a rendition of daily life on one of Norway’s rural islands a hundred years ago in a novel that was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize. Faulks developed the novel to bring more public awareness to the experience of war remembered by WWI veterans. Most critics found this effort successful, commenting on how the novel, like many other WWI novels, thematically focuses on how the experience of trauma shapes individual psyches. [2] Similarly, because of the parallel narratives WWI and 1970s Britain, the novel explores metahistorical questions about how to document and recover narratives about the past. Because of its genre, themes and writing style, the novel has been favourably compared to a number of other war novels, such as Ian McEwan's Atonement and those in Pat Barker's Regeneration Trilogy.

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Wow, what a powerful read. Wow, wow, wow! I always find that middle grade books have some of the strongest themes that kids need to read about and this is definitely one of those books. Filled with conversations of finding one’s passion again after a tragic accident, finding the strength to move on past tragedy, and so much more. Birdsong is one of those reads that can make anyone feel seen.