Birdsong

Product Information

On 1st July 2020, a virtual production of Birdsong was streamed online to mark the 104th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme. Katherena has moved with her mother from a seaside city to a new home out in the country. Katherena has always loved to draw, but she is struggling with the relocation, and she doesn’t feel like drawing now. That is, until she meets her elderly neighbor Agnes. 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. Hey! I was just setting out the book composition, this is a review of sorts, don't ya know! Alongside the fictionalised first-hand descriptions of the harsh reality of trench warfare, there's also depictions of:

This is a book that will stay with me for a long time as it has all the elements of a 5 star read for me. Its got the passion, the history and a great plot. It has the ability to make the reader exclaim out loud and to remember a time when precious lives were lost in the name of war. Birdsong is a historical drama about WWI. Whenever I read about the tragedies of war I realize that had I been a soldier I never would have mentally recovered from the atrocities witnessed. Stephen, the main character, does recover but at a great cost.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. There are musical moments, too, from soldiers playing the flute to violins and song, and this brings theatricality but also slows down the pace of the drama which, at two-and-a-half hours, feels long. a b Sokołowska-Paryż, Marzena (2015). "Re-imagining the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme in Contemporary British Writing". In Anna Branach-Kallas; Nelly Strehlau (eds.). Re-imagining the First World War: New Perspectives in Anglophone Literature and Culture. Newcastle-upon-Tyne, United Kingdom: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. pp.92–109. ISBN 978-1-4438-8338-2. Archived from the original on 5 August 2021 . Retrieved 31 July 2021. This is a lovely little picture book that spans the seasons and shows an intergenerational friendship between a little girl and her elderly neighbour.

The gruesome, gut wrenching realities for soldiers fighting this war are told in phrases so descriptive that you almost wish you hadn't read them - about the smell of blood, wounds and body parts, the claustrophobic, horrific conditions in the tunnels and ultimately what the men lose of themselves .There are friendships and brotherhoods that grow making for some moving and very sad scenes.Agnes works with clay. The budding friendship between the two artists inspires Katherena to resume her drawing. And when age and winter confine Agnes to her bed, it is Katherena’s artwork taped all over the elderly neighbor’s bedroom that lifts Agnes’s spirits. a b c d Wheeler, Pat (2002). "Narrative form/Style". Sebastian Faulks's Birdsong. New York: Continuum International Publishing. pp.23–30. ISBN 0-8264-5323-6. Archived from the original on 5 August 2021 . Retrieved 31 July 2021. This book has everything. It is exciting and horribly moving and oh so wonderful. It is like life: full of the worst and most wonderful. The heroism and unflinching humanity these ordinary people displayed is something those of us who’ve lived our lives untroubled by war will probably never understand. They had to be phenomenally brave to survive – in the mental sense as much as the physical. BIRDSONG brings that home to us in no uncertain terms. Take heed, because as a reader of this book you will need to be likewise. oh yeah and all the women want children??? literally all of them??? excuse me but having children is not the be all and end all of womanhood.