mohammedelgizay

I almost feel bad for not giving this book a higher rating, because I do think it's impressive and important in many ways. It's impressive in its haunting, surgically precise depictions of the tension, violence, and desolation of war - the final episodes set in 1918 were especially strong. It's important as a reminder of how WWI opened the gates to a level of destruction that humans had never experienced before and were unprepared to cope with, and how the war did long-term damage to people's lives long after its official end. Despite all this, I was left unconvinced by many of the characters and the relationships among them. This is especially true of the romantic relationships. They had such a large role in the story, but they left me generally unmoved. These relationships began (and ended) in speedy but somewhat predictable ways, which made it difficult to deeply appreciate why they happened. There was also something hollow about most of the characters. I was disappointed that the female characters (Isabelle and Elizabeth being the most developed ones) seemed almost entirely motived by desires to be loved by men and/or to have children. There was slightly more diversity among the male characters, but there was still a lingering impression that many of them were cliches, without much thought put into them. A possible exception was Weir, who seemed to have a distinctive personality and whose anxiety and frustration were tangible and complex. I'm undecided about how I feel about Stephen. His rootlessness and detachment from life were part of who he was, but perhaps these characteristics were taken to an extreme, to the point that I felt similarly detached from his narrative. Lastly, the dialog would sometimes become stilted as characters lapsed (unrealistically) into long, autobiographical explanations. The writing in general tended to be heavy-handed. I think Faulks was aiming for grandness, but the overwrought prose would sometimes dilute the emotional impact of what he was trying to convey.

2022-11-14 17:27